Was the Iberian Peninsula’s Bronze Age more advanced technologically than history has given it credit for? New study of the Treasure of Villena 66 pieces of gold, silver, and iron artifacts discovered in south-eastern Spain has turned the conventional wisdom on its head, showing that prehistoric metalworkers there were not only highly skilled but also innovators in the use of materials that had literally fallen from the sky.
The Villena Treasure, unearthed by archaeologist José María Soler García in 1963, has been dazzling for decades with its beautifully made gold bowls, bracelets, and bottles. But of these shining artifacts, two modest iron pieces a hollow gold-capped hemisphere and an open bracelet have become the center of a scientific whodunit. For decades, the occurrence of iron in a Bronze Age setting was mysterious, since the massive smelting of terrestrial iron did not become a possibility until centuries afterward. The solution, it appears, was in the stars.
Sophisticated analytical methods have been at the heart of this discovery. Scientists took small samples from the iron objects and ran them through mass spectrometry, a process that identifies the mass-to-charge ratio of ions and can differentiate between the subtle chemical signatures of meteoritic and terrestrial iron. The conclusions were unequivocal: the hemisphere, probably the pommel of a ceremonial sword or staff, had 5.5% nickel well above terrestrial iron and a characteristic of iron meteorites. The bracelet, of lower nickel content, continues to be researched, but both items are now established as the first Iberian Peninsula artifacts irrefutably attributed to meteoritic iron by Spanish and German laboratory tests.
Meteoric iron, an alloy of iron and nickel brought to Earth by ancient meteorites, was a scarce and valuable commodity prior to the discovery of iron smelting. Its application is found in other prehistoric cultures most notably in Tutankhamun’s dagger blade but the Villenas set the limits for what was hitherto believed achievable in western Mediterranean metallurgy. As co-author of the study Ignacio Montero Ruiz of Spain’s National Research Council told Smithsonian magazine, “Iron was as valuable as gold or silver, and in this case [it was] used for ornaments or decorative purposes.” The technical achievement of working this extraterrestrial metal, which is notoriously tricky to shape because it is so high in nickel and so brittle, indicates an unparalleled level of expertise and creativity among Iberian metalworkers as reported in the new study.
The significance to the history of metallurgy is great. The occurrence of meteoritic iron in the Villena hoard, properly dated to the Late Bronze Age (1400–1200 BCE), indicates not only that ancient Iberians were able to identify and use scarce extraterrestrial materials but were also sensitive to their symbolic and social significance. These iron pieces, lodged among gold treasures, would have been regarded as cosmic presents metals not of Earth but brought from out there, saved for the most exclusive or holy uses as defined in recent archaeological understandings.
The process from meteorite to artifact is itself astounding. In contrast to terrestrial iron, which must be smelted at high temperature to be drawn from ore, meteoritic iron comes to Earth in a metallic state, though alloyed with nickel and trace amounts of such elements as cobalt. Its characteristic chemistry especially the high nickel content is what enables scientists to determine its origin with certainty. Analytical methods, such as those at the Curt-Engelhorn-Centre of Archaeometry in Germany, can even match ancient artifacts with known meteorite falls, such as with the Villena hemisphere and the Mundrabilla meteorite.
The rarity of meteoritic iron artifacts underscores the exceptional nature of the Villena Treasure. Most known examples from this period are linked to eastern Mediterranean societies, making the Iberian finds a striking outlier. As Montero Ruiz noted in El País, “These two pieces of iron had enormous value. For this reason, they were considered worthy of becoming part of this spectacular ensemble with numerous delicate gold objects and ones made with a very special iron.”
The who and how of who made these things and how they came to possess celestial raw material are matters left undecided. The facts, which are clear as day, however, are that there were Bronze Age Iberian artisans who not only mastered the earthly elements but reached for the heavens literally and metaphorically in their ambition to be beautiful, prestigious, and masters of technology.
