Alexandra Clara Ţârlea*, Bogdan Constantinescu**, Viorel Cojocaru**, Roxana Bugoi**, Mihai Florea***
*Faculty of History, University of Bucharest, Romania
** National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Engineering, Bucharest, Romania
*** National Romanian Museum of History, Bucharest, Romania

As part of the ARCHAEOMET project, during the first semester of 2006 a number of 39 prehistoric gold objects were analyzed through the XRF method. These objects, part of the collections of the National Romanian Museum of History, consist in 6 hoards and 3 single finds from Transylvania, dated from the Middle and Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. The present paper is focused on discussing the results of these analyses in combination with the archaeological data, in the attempt of establishing some conclusions on the resource areas, distribution patterns, technology of gold-working, functional and social aspects of the gold objects for the prehistoric communities.

The most relevant results are:
• - a native gold (Transylvania) provenance (mainly alluvional - placers) for the famous Biia vase: Au = 84.3%, Ag = 15.1%, Cu = 0.48%, Sn 300 ppm, Sb 150 ppm
• - an unique Transylvanian gold source (mainly native alluvional) for Sacueni and Cauas hoards
• - different gold sources (Transylvanian but probably also Balkan) for Smig hoard

No evidence for a gold refining procedure - high content of silver for all the analyzed objects.