Investigation of the bronze inlay in a grey ceramic jug from the Tartessic Era (VII century BC)

The bronze inlay in a grey ceramic jug is investigated with the aid of scanning electron microscopy and EDX-analysis. The jug was found in the region of Toledo in Spain and has been dated to the VII century BC. Both the composition of the binary copper – tin bronze and it’s crystallographic structure reinforce the hypothesis that the jug is an artefact of the Tartessic culture. This in turn indicates that the influence of this early Iberian culture was considerably more widespread than was previously assumed.