3000 YEARS OF COPPER METALLURGY - SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF MOSSBAUER-SPECTROSCOPY .2. A BRONZE-AGE COPPER PROCESS IN THE ALPINE REGION

For reconstructing an ancient copper smelting process the operative conditions as temperature and oxygen fugacity in the furnace and rate of cooling of the products must be known. This can be achieved by the semiquantitative determination of the mineral phases and the structure of the slags with the aid cf analytical methods especially Mossbauer spectroscopy. Then thermodynamic data and approaches developed in geology are used to deduce the process parameters.