Jean Milot

Field Museum of Natural History · Anthropology

While lead isotopes serve to determine potential ore provenance, silver isotopes help evaluate if a specific ore flagged by Pb isotopes has actually been exploited as a silver source of bullion in antiquity. The combination of Ag and Pb isotopes thus constitutes a powerful tool to address provenance and identify potential ore sources. It has recent...

Stable and radiogenic isotope analysis – particularly using lead isotope analysis (LIA) – has previously been shown to be a useful tool for the provenancing of ancient metal artefacts of silver and copper and its alloys, but less progress has been made in the provenancing of iron artefacts, despite their importance and frequency in the archaeologic...

Wood et al. (2023), hereinafter WPB, unveils a number of historical issues relevant to Roman economy and metallurgy based on trace element and Pb isotope abundance data on a large set of important coins minted during the Roman Empire (Ponting and Butcher 2015). Here, we discuss several points which, in our view, misrepresent the work of other group...

Variations of ¹⁰⁹Ag/¹⁰⁷Ag in silver coins and ores are particularly useful in assessing the provenance of silver bullion. Silver isotope variability results from the temperature-dependent thermodynamic fractionation of Ag isotopes among the solutions and minerals participating in ore formation. They differ from lead isotopic variations which result...

Silver played a key role in the progressive monetization of early Mediterranean civilizations. We combine Pb and Ag isotopes with volatile trace elements (Bi, Sb, and As) to assess whether, during the Roman occupation of Iberia, galena constituted a significant source of silver. We find that the Pb and Ag isotopic compositions of 47 samples of gale...

In an attempt to clarify the significance of Pb model ages in Pb-Zn sedimentary deposits, we report high-precision Pb isotopic compositions for 64 galenas and 52 K-feldspars, the former from ores and the latter separated from granites. All samples are from Spain and the French Pyrenees. Lead from galena ores is of unequivocal continental origin. Wi...

Iron isotopes were used to determine the origin of iron bars from Les Saintes‐Maries‐de‐la‐Mer Roman shipwrecks which was a major archaeological finding of the end of the 20th century in France. Their Fe isotope composition was measured by Multi Collector – Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometry (MC‐ICP‐MS) after chemical iron purification....

The reasons why the Western Mediterranean, especially Carthage and Rome, resisted monetization relative to the Eastern Mediterranean are still unclear. We address this question by combining lead (Pb) and silver (Ag) isotope abundances in silver coinage from the Aegean, Magna Graecia, Carthage and Roman Republic. The clear relationships observed bet...

The conventional approach to ore provenance studies of ancient silver coins and artifacts has been to first analyze and then try to match them to published data about mining districts, a difficult task given our incomplete knowledge of these. While literary sources are useful to identify possible provenances, they potentially bias interpretations p...

Understanding details of stone tool procurement and transfers is for a major research avenue in improving our knowledge about prehistoric societies. The accuracy of the provisioning sources identifications is based on the establishment of large regional repositories. Recent studies show that specific investigations on the evolution of cherts were e...

L'objectif de ce travail de thèse a été de développer l'utilisation des isotopes du fer pour le traçage des métaux anciens, principalement ferreux. Notre approche méthodologique s'est articulée autour de trois axes majeurs. Le premier axe a consisté à étudier l'influence potentielle des processus métallurgiques sur la composition isotopique du fer...

At the end of the fifth millennium bc, the development of a specialized lithic industry in the Chassey societies of south-eastern France and its dissemination as far as Catalonia and Tuscany attest to important socio-economic changes in the Mediterranean Neolithic societies. The lithic production was made on barremo-bedoulian flint that was heat-tr...

The geological data bank MP-ALP results of several surveys conducted during the 1990’s, under the supervision of D. Binder (CNRS, CEPAM) with the support of the French Culture Ministry (SRA PACA), as well as by P. Simon (Musée d’Anthropologie Préhistorique de Monaco). These field campaigns aimed to record and to sample the siliceous rocks from the...