On the composition and provenance of metal finds from Beşiktepe (Troia)

Lead isotopy and trace element contents of most of the copper-based artifacts from Besiktepe dating to Troia I suggest that the copper derives from western Anatolian ore deposits. Gumuskoy, Serceorenkoy, and Balya, all sites with evidence for prehistoric mining activities going back to the late third millennium B.C., are most conspicuous in this respect. These ore occurrences also qualify as sources for many of the contemporaneous copper objects from Thermi on Lesbos and Poliochni on Lemnos analyzed previously. Exceptions among the Troia I Besiktepe objects are the two pieces of bronze found among the 22 fragments chemically analyzed, and one piece of unalloyed copper. Notably, none of the copper objects can be traced back to Ergani, neither to its copper ores nor to its native copper. Eleven artifacts recovered from graves at the Besik-Necropolis, dating to Troia VI, are all bronze. Their trace element abundance patterns are remarkably uniform; silver contents in the bronzes are much lower than in the unalloyed copper dating to Troia I indicating that these bronzes cannot have been manufactured by alloying tin with the kind of copper that is present in the unalloyed copper. Lead isotope data, not available at present, will have to decide whether the characteristics of these bronze pieces are again foreign to all copper ores from Anatolia and the Aegean just as has been observed to be the case for most bronze objects from Poliochni and Thermi.