Gold from the Mediterranean region for the Celtic prince of Glauberg?

"Where did the gold of the Glauberg "Celtic prince" actually come from? This is just one of the many unanswered questions that the research center at Glauberg is working on. It is therefore one of the partners in the international research project "Celtic gold - goldsmith's work in the western part of the Latène culture" led by the Curt-Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry in Mannheim and the TRACES research institute (CNRS) in Toulouse.

The initial results of the analyses are already very exciting, but they also raise new questions. For example, the analyses of the gold revealed that one of the two small rings (earrings?) from the Glauberg "princely grave" was made of river gold, while the other was made of purified gold, i.e. an alloy that contains significantly less silver than natural river gold.

That alone is an exciting discovery, but it only becomes really exciting when you realise that, according to current knowledge, the technique for purifying gold was not yet known north of the Alps at the time of the Glaucian "prince" - so the gold in the second ring probably comes from the Mediterranean region!

What connections might there have been between the Glauberg and Italy? How did the gold get from there to the edge of the Wetterau? Did an itinerant craftsman bring it with him, was it a gift or payment for goods travelling south from the Glauberg? But what goods could they have been? And why weren't both rings made from the same material - was the second ring a replacement for a lost ring that was made from a different piece of gold than the first? Even almost 25 years after the discovery of the tomb, things are still exciting at Glauberg!

We would like to thank the CELTIC GOLD project team for the good cooperation and are excited about further results!”