Studies in organic archaeometry IV: analysis of an organic agglutinant used to fix iron-age clay figurines to their base

Abstract

Among many other objects a number of (mainly broken) figurines made of burnt clay were found in a richly furnished Early Iron-age tomb excavated in Lower Austria.Some of these had a dark organic material on their legs, obviously intended to fix the figurines to a base.A small sample of this agglutinant was analyzed: upon isolation of the characteristic terpenecontaining fraction 13 C-nmr spectroscopy showed considerable quantities of betulin.Thus this adhesive can be considered as birch bark pitch.

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