Measurement of corrosion content of archaeological lead artifacts by their Meissner response in the superconducting state; a new dating method

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel, non-destructive chemical dating method for archaeological lead artifacts based on their Meissner response in the superconducting state, correlating corrosion content with age over 2500 years.

Contribution

It presents a new superconductivity-based technique to estimate the age of lead artifacts by measuring their corrosion content, applicable to soils with pH>6.5.

Findings

Corrosion mass correlates with artifact age over 2500 years.

Method is applicable to lead artifacts in specific soil conditions.

The technique is non-destructive and based on Meissner response measurements.

Abstract

Meissner fraction in the superconducting state of lead archaeological artifacts is used to evaluate the mass of the uncorroded metal in the sample. Knowing the total mass of the sample the mass of all corrosion products is established. It is shown that this mass correlates with the archaeological age of the lead artifacts over a time span of ~2500 years. Well-dated untreated lead samples from Tel-Dor, the Persian period, Caesarea, the Byzantine and the Crusader periods as well as contemporary data were used to establish the dating correlation. This new chemical dating method is apparently applicable to lead artifacts buried in soils with the pH>6.5. In such soils the corrosion process is very slow and the corrosion products, mainly PbO and PbCO3, accumulate over hundreds of years. The method presented is in principle non-destructive. (corresponding author: <shimon.reich@weizmann.ac.il>)