King Croesus' Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining

This book, the eleventh volume in the site report series, deals with the discovery and finds from the gold refining area in the city of Sardis. The gold refining area of the site was excavated between 1964 and 1968. At the time, as noted by Rammage (p. 72), it was thought to be part of a destruction layer. Aside from a brief description of the site remains, this book's focus is on the metallurgical remains that were found at the site. It is extremely technical and aimed at an engineering/archaeometallurgy crowd, and not the usual archaeology reader.While one can raise trivial issues on the technical studies, this book does suffer in aspects of its production. While it is copiously illustrated with both black and white, and color figures, the value of some of them is questionable. The out-of-focus color photographs of the gold foils in Figures 9.1 through 9.5 seem a waste, and a scale and a key are sorely needed in Figure 9.25. The six color pages of sherds, without a scale no less, seem excessive. One also has to question the use of a color photograph in Figure 2.6, when the same information is essentially shown in Figures 2.4 and 2.5. The sketch in Figure 4.31 should have been re-drawn. Given the cost they add to a book, color plates should be used in a meaningful fashion and of a high quality. Unfortunately that is not the case here. In terms of the chapter arrangement and content, one is forced to flip back and forth between the chapters and appendices to follow the discussion. This book at times tries to deal with the artifacts on the basis of the analytical technique, and at other times tries to deal with them on a materials basis (gold, silver, etc.). For example, the information on the gold foils and their refining is dispersed through Chapters 5, 9 and Appendix 4. In another case, the information on the parting sherds is spread between Chapters 5 and 6. The editors should have taken a more active role in preventing these gaffes. The results presented here, while resolving how the gold was refined at Sardis, raises further questions to be answered. It is hoped that the authors continue to pursue them in the future. This is a useful reference for scholars doing analytical studies of ancient gold, but it will have limited appeal for Classicists, archaeologists and numismatists. The archaeological site report and description of the finds takes up only a small portion of this volume. For the numismatist, there are only 20 new analyses presented, and the rest have appeared elsewhere.

Amazing book!