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Three Icelandic basalts for resampling of BIR basalt for production of ISO-certification of whole rock powder

The USGS has suspended the distribution of the widely used whole rock reference materials BHVO, BCR and BIR. The goal of this work is to identify a material as similar as possible to the original BIR Islandic basalt. This material can then undergo an ISO-compliant certification of the whole rock powder major and trace element contents. The sampling quarry east of Reykjavik has multiple basalt flows and it is not known which one was originally sampled in 1980 for production of above mentioned reference materials. In this study, three samples were tested to see which is most similar to what was published by Flanigan (1984). Here, the results of this exploratory sample collection are presented, but note that these data are not part of the certification process or represent certified results.

GlobaLID – Global Lead Isotope Database (Version 08/2025)

This dataset is a continuously growing collection of lead isotope reference data. Lead isotopes are an established method to reconstruct the raw material provenance of archaeological objects. They are typically applied to artefacts made of copper, lead, silver, and their alloys. However, also the raw material provenance of other materials such as glass, pigments and pottery was already investigated using lead isotopes. To successfully reconstruct the origin of the raw material, lead isotope signatures from as many as possible suitable raw material occurrences must be known. In the past, large-scaled research projects were carried out to characterise ore deposits especially in the Mediterranean area and Western Europe. However, many of these data are dispersed in the literature and were published in scientific articles or monographs. Consequently, each researcher or at least each research group had to build their own up-to-date database of reference data from the literature. To overcome these restrictions, to facilitate work with lead isotope reference data and particularly to make the data FAIR, i.e., findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al. 2016), these published data are compiled and transferred into a uniform layout. They are further enhanced with additional metadata to facilitate their use in raw material provenance studies. Currently, the database is restricted to ores and minerals as these are the most relevant materials for provenance studies of ancient metals. Future updates will include hitherto uncovered regions but also additional data from countries already present. Slag and other metallurgical (by-) products from ancient sites in close vicinity to ore deposits generally are a genuine representation of the ores utilised in historic times. As such, they are highly relevant for provenance studies and an extension to these materials is therefore planned. GlobaLID is a representation of the collective work of researchers on Pb isotope studies. As such, the database is seen as a community engagement project that invites scientists all over the world to become active contributors of GlobaLID. The initiators of the database dedicate their effort to the continuation and maintenance of the database but only the support of the whole community will allow a rapid and successful growth of GlobaLID.

Noble metals, major and minor elements in modern and pre-historic lavas of Tolbachik volcano

Full element (major elements, minor elements, platinum-group elements and gold) analysis of high- and low-Mg lavas from several eruptions of Tolbachik volcano, Kamchatka, Russia. Eruptions include 2012-13, 1975-76, 1941 and several recent prehistoric (<1400 years old) eruptions. Major elements were measured by XRF, minor elements by ICP-MS and platinum-group elements and gold were measured using Ni-sulfide fire assay and ICP-MS. All analyses were undertaken at Geoscience Laboratories (Geo Labs) Ontario Geological Survey in 2019. These data were originally published as a supplement to Kutyrev et al. (2021), Noble Metals in Arc Basaltic Magmas Worldwide: A Case Study of Modern and Pre-Historic Lavas of the Tolbachik Volcano, Kamchatka, In Frontiers in Earth Science (9), https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.791465. This work was funded by the Ministry of Science and High Education of the Russian Federation (Grant No 075-15-2019-1883), The National Research Foundation (NRF) of the Korean government (No. 2019R1A2C1009809A) and the Russian Science Foundation (Grant #21-17-00122).

GlobaLID – Global Lead Isotope Database (Version 12/2023)

This dataset is a continuously growing collection of lead isotope reference data. Lead isotopes are an established method to reconstruct the raw material provenance of archaeological objects. They are typically applied to artefacts made of copper, lead, silver, and their alloys. However, also the raw ma- terial provenance of other materials such as glass, pigments and pottery was already investigated us- ing lead isotopes. To successfully reconstruct the origin of the raw material, lead isotope signatures from as many as possible suitable raw material occurrences must be known. In the past, large-scaled research projects were carried out to characterise ore deposits especially in the Mediterranean area and Western Eu- rope. However, many of these data are dispersed in the literature and were published in scientific articles or monographs. Consequently, each researcher or at least each research group had to build their own up-to-date database of reference data from the literature. To overcome these restrictions, to facilitate work with lead isotope reference data and particularly to make the data FAIR, i.e., finda- ble, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al. 2016), these published data are compiled and transferred into a uniform layout. They are further enhanced with additional metadata to facili- tate their use in raw material provenance studies. Currently, the database is restricted to ores and minerals as these are the most relevant materials for provenance studies of ancient metals. Future updates will include hitherto uncovered regions but also additional data from countries already present. Slag and other metallurgical (by-) products from ancient sites in close vicinity to ore deposits generally are a genuine representation of the ores uti- lised in historic times. As such, they are highly relevant for provenance studies and an extension to these materials is therefore planned. GlobaLID is a representation of the collective work of researchers on Pb isotope studies. As such, the database is seen as a community engagement project that invites scientists all over the world to be- come active contributors of GlobaLID. The initiators of the database dedicate their effort to the con- tinuation and maintenance of the database but only the support of the whole community will allow a rapid and successful growth of GlobaLID.

GlobaLID – Global Lead Isotope Database

This dataset is a continuously growing collection of lead isotope reference data. Lead isotopes are an established method to reconstruct the raw material provenance of archaeological objects. They are typically applied to artefacts made of copper, lead, silver, and their alloys. However, also the raw material provenance of other materials such as glass, pigments and pottery was already reconstructed with lead isotopes. To successfully reconstruct the origin of the raw material, lead isotope signatures from as many as possible suitable raw material occurrences must be known. In the past, large-scaled research projects were carried out to characterise ore deposits especially in the Mediterranean area and Western Europe. However, many of these data are dispersed in the literature and were published in scientific articles or monographies. Consequently, each researcher or at least each research group had to build their own up-to-date data base of reference data from the literature. To overcome these restrictions, to facilitate work with lead isotope reference data and particularly to make the data FAIR, i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016), these published data are compiled and transferred into a uniform layout. They are further enhanced with additional metadata to facilitate their use in raw material provenance studies. Currently, the database is restricted to ores and minerals as these are the most relevant materials for provenance studies of ancient metals. Future updates will include hitherto uncovered regions but also additional data from countries already present. Slag and other metallurgical (by-) products from ancient sites in close vicinity to ore deposits generally are a genuine representation of the ores utilised in historic times. As such, they are highly relevant for provenance studies and an extension to these materials is therefore planned. GlobaLID is a representation of the collective work of researchers on Pb isotope studies. As such, the database is seen as a community engagement project that invites scientists all over the world to become active contributors of GlobaLID. The initiators of the database dedicate their effort to the continuation and maintenance of the database but only the support of the whole community will allow a rapid and successful growth of GlobaLID.

Copper isotope fractionation during prehistoric smelting of copper sulfides: experimental and analytical data

The project from which the data derived aimed to establish the first systematic study of Cu isotope fractionation during the prehistoric smelting and refining process. For this reason, an experimental approach was used to smelt sulfide copper ore according to reconstructed prehistoric smelting models. The ore was collected by E. Hanning as part of her PhD thesis work from a Bronze Age mining site, the Mitterberg region, Austria (Hanning and Pils 2011) and was made available for the experiments.All starting materials for the experiments such as the natural ore, roasted ore, construction clay, flux, dung (used for the roasting), wood and charcoal (fuel) were natural materials. All firing conditions including the amount of fuel or charging material and the temperatures in the furnaces were recorded, and the experimental procedures were documented in the very detail. In total, 30 experiments were carried out in 4 experimental series. The smelting products, both intermediate products and final products were sampled during or after the respective experiment. Slag, matte and copper metal were the major smelting products. All other materials used in and produced by the experiments were sampled, too. Materials used and produced in the two most promising experimental series with regard to potential Cu isotope fractionation were analyzed. Based on the analytical results, the potential of Cu isotopes as a tool in archaeometallurgical research was systematically evaluated and consequences for the copper isotope application as a provenance tool in archaeometry were identified.The data include the documentation of the experiments, laboratory procedures and analytical methods. An experimental outline was previously published in Rose et al. (2019). Analytical methods applied were ICP-MS (elemental analysis, 80 samples), MC-ICP-MS (copper isotopes, 98 samples), and XRD (phase analysis, 25 samples). The experiments were carried out at the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Labor für Experimentelle Archäologie, Mayen, Germany. Laboratories used for the analytical part of the project were the research laboratories at the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum and FIERCE (Frankfurt Isotope and Element Research Center), Goethe-University Frankfurt, both Germany. Data were processed and plots created with R (R Core Team 2019) in RStudio®. Data are provided as data tables or text files, the R scripts used to create the time-temperature plots of the smelting experiments are also included.The full description of the data and methods is provided in the data description file.