Three-isotope plot for lead showing the analysed artefacts and the most probable ore provenances plotted as ellipsoidal spaces
Source: BAM, Division Inorganic Trace Analysis
Throughout the ages magic artefacts have been used to gain advantage for the creator or client or to gain disadvantage for a third person. In antiquity thin sheets of lead have been used to inscribe specific texts in tiny letters. The lead sheets were then often rolled or folded and pierced with nails before they were placed beneath the ground in graves or deposited in wells or sanctuaries. The purpose of these so-called curse tablets is manifold reaching from real curses condemning persons for a conducted crime, curses to gain advantage over a third person or even love spells. In some cases, curse tablets have been found in the form of small figurines, which are sometimes referred to as “Voodoo dolls” due to their similarities with such dolls from Africa or the Caribbean.
Lead curse tablets were written first (5th century BC) in Athens, Sicily, and Olbia. Some decades later they were also used in other European regions such as Ancient Rome, Carthage, and Britain. The base material lead offers large variations in the natural abundance of the four lead isotopes 204Pb, 206Pb, 207Pb and 208Pb and artefacts made from lead reflect the isotopic composition of the lead ore used. Pairing up the isotopic composition of ancient lead artefacts with the isotopic compositions of lead ore deposits potentially makes it possible to identify the geographical origin of the respective lead ores.
To gain more insight into the provenance of curse tablets form ancient Greece 59 magic objects from the “Staatliche Museen zu Berlin” have been selected for lead isotope analysis by thermal ionization mass spectrometry using a fully validated analytical procedure. The resulting lead isotopic composition of the artefacts was been compared to more than 2700 data of potential lead ores from Europe and the Mediterranean. This showed that the majority of the analyzed curse tablets are made from lead matching the compositional range of the Laurion ore deposit. The attic provenance of 36 curse tablets could be confirmed. For further five curse tablets, which previously were classified as non-Attic, the provenance was changed to Attic, while for another six curse tablets the non-Attic provenance was confirmed. Six out eight analyzed curse tablets from the Egyptian collection and three out of four analyzed oracular tablets from Dodona surprisingly turned out to be made from Laurion lead. This points to Laurion as major lead source in the Aegean, at least in the 4th to 3rd century BC.
Lead isotope analysis in magic artefacts from the Berlin museums
Jochen Vogl, M. Rosner, J. Curbera, U. Peltz, Burkhard Peplinski
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2018, Volume 10, Issue 5, pp 1111–1127
BAM Department of Analytical Chemistry; Reference Materials, Division Inorganic Trace Analysis and Division Structure Analysis