IBA investigations of loose garnets from Pietroasa, Apahida and Cluj-Someseni treasures (5th century AD)

This paper reports the archaeometric investigations of 418 loose garnets from Pietroasa and Cluj-Someseni treasures and Apahida II and III princely grave inventories (5th century AD). The chemical composition of the gems was determined by external beam micro-PIXE technique at the AGLAE accelerator of C2RMF, Paris, France. Complementary observations made by Optical Microscopy revealed details on the gemstones cutting and polishing and permitted to identify certain mineral inclusions. The compositional results evidenced several types of garnets from the pyralspite series, suggesting distinct provenances for these Early Medieval gems. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.