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In an undated image provided by Tobias Skowronek, a gold piece recovered from the Whydah Gally, which sank in a storm off the coast of Massachusetts in 1717. Centuries-old European tales about Gold Coast traders adulterating precious metals hundreds of years ago are challenged by the famous Whydah Gally shipwreck. [Tobias Skowronek via The New York Times]<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Sometimes all that glitters is, in fact, real gold. But it would have been difficult to sell that idea to the many European traders who journeyed along the coast of West Africa during the age of exploration.<\/p>\n
As their vessels plied what was known as the Gold Coast, records of the era show that the English, Dutch, Swedish and other Europeans often viewed their trading partners with suspicion. There was a long-standing belief that people in that part of Africa were intentionally mixing their gold with lesser metals like silver or copper, or even with bits of glass.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a recurring theme that they\u2019re stretching the gold,\u201d said Tobias Skowronek, a geochemist who studies archaeology at the University of Bonn in Germany.<\/p>\n
But a recent study of artifacts recovered from the wreck of a pirate ship suggests that the West African traders were not passing off adulterated gold. These results were published in March in the journal Heritage Science.<\/p>\n
In the spring of 1717, the Whydah Gally, a ship captained by pirate Samuel Bellamy, sank off the coast of Massachusetts. Bellamy, known as Black Sam, and his crew had commandeered the ship in the Caribbean and were most likely heading for Maine when they encountered a fierce nor\u2019easter. The Whydah broke apart, more than 100 men perished and whatever bounty was aboard \u2014 rumored to include riches plundered from more than 50 other ships \u2014 settled on the seafloor and slowly sank under the sand.<\/p>\n
Stories of the Whydah were a mainstay of Brandon Clifford\u2019s childhood. His father, Barry, had grown up on Cape Cod and was an accomplished underwater explorer. Searching for such a storied wreck in what was practically his own backyard proved irresistible for Barry Clifford.<\/p>\n
The young Clifford would sometimes tag along during his father\u2019s expeditions. \u201cI remember these divers who were kind of like astronauts to me,\u201d Clifford said. \u201cThey\u2019d disappear into the blue depths below.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1984, the search paid off. Barry Clifford\u2019s team discovered fragments of gold, and the Whydah\u2019s distinctive bell was unearthed soon afterward. That experience was formative to Brandon Clifford, who is now an underwater archaeologist and the executive director of the Whydah Pirate Museum in Yarmouth, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n
Several hundred thousand objects have since been recovered from the Whydah, including gold artifacts that look to have been made by the Akan people of West Africa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese gold artifacts are very, very distinctively 18th-century Akan goldwork,\u201d said Christopher DeCorse, an archaeologist at Syracuse University.<\/p>\n
Those artifacts presented an intriguing opportunity to Skowronek, who was familiar with the record of European assertions of contaminated West African gold.<\/p>\n
Working with DeCorse and Clifford, Skowronek analyzed 27 gold artifacts from the Whydah that appeared to be from West Africa. Those objects included fragments of cast artifacts, some of which featured the delicate threadwork that was characteristic of Akan gold.<\/p>\n
The largest artifact was no more than half an inch across. \u201cThese are not big pieces,\u201d DeCorse said.<\/p>\n
The team fired a beam of electrons at each artifact and measured the X-rays emitted in response. Every molecular element has a unique X-ray signature, so this technique reveals an object\u2019s elemental composition.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that the 27 artifacts ranged from 70% to 100% gold by weight.<\/p>\n
When an artifact wasn\u2019t pure gold, the most common metals present were silver, copper, iron and lead.<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s true that some objects were far from pure gold, these results don\u2019t imply that West African traders were being deceitful, the team concluded. That\u2019s because the gold ore that comes from the Ashanti Gold Belt \u2014 the purported birthplace, in modern-day Ghana, of these artifacts \u2014 also naturally contains a similar range of silver and other metals by weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not 100% gold ore that you find,\u201d Skowronek said.<\/p>\n
The notion that Europeans were being systematically cheated by West African gold traders therefore appears to be \u201cnonsense,\u201d Skowronek said.<\/p>\n
Kathleen Bickford Berzock, an anthropologist and chief curator of a gold-focused exhibition at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University, was not involved in the study. She said the Whydah gold was useful for analyzing this facet of the European-African gold trade.<\/p>\n
She added that some impurities, like copper, in Akan gold could be explained more innocently. \u201cMaybe they\u2019re using the same crucible\u201d to process multiple metals, she said.<\/p>\n
These findings are a good example of science informing our understanding of history, said Francesca Casadio, the vice president of conservation and science at the Art Institute of Chicago, who was not involved in the research.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe science adds another element,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n