The technological choices of ancient smelters at this site are then discussed in their specific geographical and social-economic settings. ![]() The sides of the triangle represent an alloy system of three binary alloy diagrams AB, AC and BC. Each of the components of a ternary alloy is represented by one of the corners of an equilateral triangle. These new findings are relevant for further studies of lead and precious metal smelting slags world-wide. However, if only three components are present, an alloy diagram may be plotted by means of triangular coordinates as shown in Fig. An experimental reconstruction provides essential information, demonstrating both the significant influence of sulphur on the silicate slag system, and that iron reduction smelting of lead can be carried out at a relatively low temperature. Smelting a mixture of sulphidic and gossan ores in a relatively low temperature furnace under mildly reducing conditions, the process involved the use of metallic iron to reduce lead sulphide to lead metal, which acted as the collector of the precious metals. Here we present a reconstruction of a previously undocumented technology used to recover gold, silver and lead at the site of Baojia in Jiangxi province, China dated between the 7th and 13th centuries AD. ![]() ![]() Gold and silver production was of major importance for almost all ancient societies but has been rarely studied archaeologically.
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