Emily Chan
Over six decades ago, a collection of items from the Bronze Age were discovered in Spain. After recently performing an analysis on the objects, researchers realized that two of the artifacts were made with materials that were not from Earth.
The hoard of objects is known as the Treasure of Villena, and it was unearthed in 1963 from a gravel pit located in the province of Alicante. It consisted of 59 bottles, bowls, and jewelry pieces crafted from gold, silver, iron, and amber.
When the items were found, the archaeologists noted that some of the iron items appeared to have been made with a “dark leaden metal.”
Some parts of them were also shiny and “covered with a ferrous-looking oxide that is mostly cracked,” according to a newspaper in Spain called El País.
During the Bronze Age, gold and iron held great symbolic and social significance to people living in the Iberian Peninsula.
Researchers speculate that the objects were hidden treasures that belonged to an entire community rather than an individual since there were no established kingdoms at that period of time.
Now, years later, scientists have learned that the metal in two of the iron artifacts came from a meteorite that struck the Earth around a million years ago. One of the items was a C-shaped bracelet.
The other was a hollow sphere with a gold sheet layered over the top of it. It is believed to have been ornamentation for the end of the hilt of a sword. Both objects were constructed between 1400 and 1200 B.C.
The researchers tested these two pieces using a technique called mass spectrometry. The technique is useful for calculating the mass-to-charge ratio of molecules that are present in a sample.
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