Identification of Turquoises from Different Mining Areas using Lead and Strontium Isotope Composition

Summary

This is an abstract from the "From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Hekou Turquoise Mining Site in Shaanxi Province can provide significant clues to the provenance of turquoise in early China. In this study, we analyzed turquoise ore samples from other turquoise mines near Hekou Mining Site in eastern Qinling Mountains and established an origin identification model of turquoise ores using the ratio of lead and strontium isotopes. The lead and strontium isotopes in turquoise ore samples from five mines in the eastern Qinling Mountains were detected using High Precision Mass Spectrometer. These data could be used to explore the provenance characteristics of mines. The samples from the same origin had lead isotope ratios with comparatively good consistency. Turquoise ore samples could be classified into two groups according to the critical value of the lead isotope ratio (207Pb/208Pb),0.410. The samples could also be classified into two groups based on the critical value of the strontium isotope ratio (87Sr/86Sr), 0.7105. In addition, this study found that the combination of the lead and strontium isotope ratios could appropriately distinguish the origins of turquoise ores from these mines. The identification result obtained with the established model indicates that some of Erlitou turquoise ores came from Hekou Turquoise Mine.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• From Tangible Things to Intangible Ideas: The Context of Pan-Eurasian Exchange of Crops and Objects   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25638