Chemical and mineralogical characteristics and origin of placer gold from fluvial deposits of ?eliszowski Creek (North Sudetic Basin, SW Poland)

Chemical and mineralogical analyses of individual detrital gold grains collected from recent channel-fill deposits of over bar eliszowski Creek, lo cated be tween the towns of Lwowek OE l1ski and Boleslawiec, were made, to gether with de ter mi na tion of the Au-bear ing min eral as sem blages and in di ca tion of prob a ble source ar eas. The ana lysed gold grains have ad mix tures of sil ver, mer cury and cop per. Nu mer ous in clu sions of ore min er als, mainly Cu, Hg selenides and Cu, Pb and Bi sulphides were found in the de tri tal gold grains. These min er als are char ac ter is tic of Perm ian, Au-bear ing, red-bed suc ces sions in the re gion, and of quartz veins of the Kaczawa Meta mor phic Com plex. This sup ports the hy poth e sis of a poly gen etic or i gin for the Lower Silesian al lu vial gold-bear ing de pos its. The ap plied re search meth od ol ogy may be suc cess fully used in polymetallic ore deposit prospecting more generally.