Long before iron smelting became widespread in Greece, some Bronze Age elites were already wearing jewellery made from iron that may have come from meteorites. A five-year study by Matthieu Gounelle of France's National Museum of Natural History and Eleni Mantzourani of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens examined 105 Bronze Age and Early Iron Age artefacts from 33 archaeological sites held in 19 museums. Of the 105 objects, 91 were iron and were examined in detail using portable X-ray fluorescence. Thirteen iron objects, all rings or fragments of rings, contained significant amounts of nickel, a strong indicator of meteoritic iron. The researchers concluded that 9 of the rings were very likely made from meteoritic iron, another was quite likely to have been, while 3 require further investigation. The findings suggest that iron from meteorites was not simply a strange material encountered by chance, but a rare and valuable substance used for jewellery associated with powerful members of Minoan and Mycenaean society more than 3,000 years ago.
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