@mattyhari with the way iron oxidizes and it being in a lake bed, I'm amazed at the condition it's in.. something must be in the lake beds that stabilizes any reactions. Cold I know helps but 2400 years, I'm amazed the detail on the blade is preserved of those figures. I'm jealous of your job.

@skanman From memory, the water conditions were relatively anoxic. This would have helped the preservation condition enormously.

@mattyhari ok so this has been running in the back of my brain for a while. I'm gonna make some assumptions that these swords were placed on bodies as decorations similar to Nordic burial traditions where they put a body on a boat and set it ablaze as a funeral right. Presuming that, the sword wouldn't be alone and wouldn't get covered by sediment for approximately 300 years or so if we guess 2mm per year would layer 600mm of sediment build up. While I'm also assuming it's fresh water with low salt and other caustic elements, I'm willing to bet that other artifacts near that sword weren't found because they're gone. I'm not saying that we should copy these sedimentary compounds so a 2023 Honda Accord will survive 2500 years, I'm saying they were aware of the caustic affects weather had on iron work 500bce, and probably treated the sword before it was finished. If I'm right, metallurgy was slightly further along than we thought it was. I'm no history buff but I'm willing to bet that there's traces of zinc or nickel on that blade. If there is, you can update a couple history books. If I'm wrong, you can get samples of the sediment and send it to Dupont or 3M for synthesis and start making ship containers that decay like 300% slower using environmentally safe materials and poof your a millionaire.. win / win 👍 no more coffee for me today.

@skanman I enjoyed that!! :-) Trying to remember the details (it’s been a while and the La Tène iron is not my main area of research) there were literally hundreds of metal objects in the lakes. Swords, brooches, pins, chariot parts etc. Not all iron but mostly. But there’s no evidence these deposits were part of a specific burial custom, although some human and animal bones, as well as wood, woven material, (goes to show just how anoxic the deposit was!), pottery and glass were also found. I have read that the Celts saw water as the gateway to this world and the next and that these are offerings to their gods, along with human and animal sacrifice. Highly recommend if you’re ever in Neuchâtel in Switzerland you visit the wonderful Laténium Park and Museum. The museum in Biel that houses the Schwab collection (the sword in my photo is from there) is also good. And you can visit the submerged pile dwellings nearby. As to metallurgical analyses, rare to see them done on highly desirable museum objects. Even surface XRF requires abrasive prep. The only metalligraphic analysis I know of is that of Mihok and Kotyogoroshko in 2009, who destructively analysed several La Tène objects from the Malaya Kopan complex in Ukraine. They found a mixed bag of low-carbon heterogeneous steel but also edged weapons that had had their edges, or in one case one side, carburised. All were plain carbon steels. :-)

@skanman edit: metallographic.

@mattyhari that's insanely great that they got that level of steel quality back then. Everything added up except chariot parts, to my historical knowledge, that was never part of many burial rituals as chariots we're not utilized by any Scandinavian mythologies. Plus, floating a chariot would be a logistical nightmare even today 😂. I do have plans to visit Switzerland in the coming years but I'm still wandering Asia expanding my tech biz. I know the history in that area runs deep and it the region is breathtaking even if there was no awesome complex heritage to immersive myself in. I studied psychology and sociology in University cause those were my weaknesses and learning about sociological development through anthropology and history enabled me to learn the most about human nature by establishing common denominators of behaviors that never change despite region or era. So learning about these artifacts and how people utilized and crafted them makes me appreciate human nature more. This is a blessing for me cause generally I hate everyone. But understanding more about how we became us, really lowers my ego and that's a good feeling. The traditions that made us over the centuries don't define us today, but knowing them helps us define tomorrow. I also bet holding that sword makes you feel a connection to it's history, for that I'm a bit jealous. I'd love to see and read more about it. 🤓

I'm not surprised about the bones though, I learned a lot about decalcification and how it chemically replaces with similar density minerals at a mummification exhibit in Tampa like 10 years ago. That was amazing cause if you donated enough money they'd teach you how to radiomap on real sarcophagus's to create images of contents without opening them. Who could refuse that?!

@skanman yes you're right. It's impt to think about the human consciousness behind every artefact.
Good luck with your travels and biz in Asia, but I really hope you do get a chance to visit the La Téne type site, I am certain you would enjoy it.

@mattyhari you mentioned before about the metallurgy analysis being abrasive to the metals, and I was working with a mining company that had these handy guns "niton xrf analyzer".

Let me 1st illustrate the bad idea of firing x-rays at artifacts that will likely reflect those xrays back at you in the field. But if you made a box with dense collapsible walls that reflect them back away again. This solution is great cause you could analyze artifacts right there in the field eliminating possible contaminations in transit. You wouldn't need to damage the artifact.

Mining companies use them to prospect in real time by gathering samples and checking alloy percentages inside the mines to calculate in which direction veins travel or if ore contains what they're looking for but disguised in an alloy that normally distorts the observable properties. This is far less destructive than drilling grids through complex terrain "randomly" then checking by chemical reaction.

I would think these xrf guns would be an archeologists dream. While they mostly only measure heavy metals, scio makes a pocket spectrometer that can detect small amounts of lighter trace metals or compounds closer to the surface, but it's accurate enough to detect down to the molecular scale.

Combining the two devices would give you details about artifacts right there in the field that would be clearer than a lab.

Sorry I'm a tech guy. But when I read "abrasive" and "artifacts" together, that seemed like a bad idea. Damaging this great stuff seems unjustifiable if more accurate non abrasive analytical tools exist. If it's an issue of funding, I'm sure I could convince my old client to donate 1 or 2 of the older XRF guns, and SCIO I believe has special arrangements for education and research.

@skanman pXRF has become almost standard issue in archaeology these days, sometimes they're even calibrated for ancient alloys. But it's a worry when people use it on corroded metal without understanding that it has technical limitations, e.g. sample heterogeneity can significantly affect quantification (and old stuff tends to have extremely heterogeneous surfaces). This is why analysts may prepare samples by grinding off the corrosion crust in a small area. Even then not foolproof bc you can get quite variable segregation of corrosion product in sub-surface layers of corroded metal. I don't want to ramble on too much about this but N. Shugar wrote an excellent article in 2013 "Portable X-ray Fluorescence and Archaeology: Limitations of the Instrument and Suggested Methods to Achieve Desired Results", if you are keen to explore further.