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A Note on Roman Brass and Pulitzer's Problems Telling the Truth

1/28/2016

22 Comments

 
I don't quote Ronald Reagan often, but brace yourselves because I'm going to quote him now:

"There you go again."

Reagan delivered that line in an exchange with Jimmy Carter in a presidential debate in 1980. He said it following a laundry list of claims by Carter about Reagan's stance on healthcare issues, famously dismissing what he regarded as a bunch of inaccurate nonsense.

Most of the latest temper tantrum of inaccurate nonsense delivered to the world by demonstrated liar, accomplished plagiarist, and former Facebook user J. Hutton Pulitzer can be just as easily waved off as foot stomping that is not relevant to the "evidence" that he has put forward to support his claim of an ancient Roman visit to Nova Scotia. There is one point I wanted to discuss, however, that relates directly to misinformation about the Nova Scotia sword.

In her analysis of the sword, Christa Brosseau found the copper alloy used to make the sword to be 35% zinc. The high level of zinc (indicating a modern brass) was one of several observations that led Brosseau to conclude that the sword was probably manufactured sometime after 1880. Brosseau wrote that "a brass that is being put forward as ancient which contains a zinc content greater that 28% is suspicious." 

In his post, Pulitzer seems to be claiming that ancient Roman artifacts commonly had levels of zinc in the 35% range.  He writes:
"With the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility — Office of Science Education specifically citing that a zinc level of 28% falls almost exactly in the middle of the range PROVEN to be both Roman and up to 2,500 years old, who does one trust?"
When dealing with Pulitzer, the safe answer to the "who does one trust" question is always the same: not Pulitzer.

The webpage he links to does indeed say that copper alloys classified as brass contain between 5% and 45% zinc.  It says the Romans made brass, but it does not say that the Romans made high zinc brass. They did not. I'll back up my statement with a couple of quoted references (thanks to my readers for pointing these out), and then finish off my discussion of Pulitzer's characterization of Roman brass with a helpful meme.

Here is quote from "A Roman Late-Republican Gladius from the River Ljubljanica," a 2000 paper by Janka Istenic:
"The majority of Roman fresh cementation brasses, unadulterated with scrap bronze, seem to contain about 20% of zinc, little lead, and a small amount of tin (cf. Jackson, Craddock 1995, 93; Craddock, Lambert 1985, 164)."
Here is what is says about Roman brass on Wikipedia, which one would think would be an easy enough source to consult:
"Brass made during the early Roman period seems to have varied between 20% to 28% wt zinc.[71] The high content of zinc in coinage and brass objects declined after the first century AD and it has been suggested that this reflects zinc loss during recycling and thus an interruption in the production of new brass.[72]" 
Finally, there is a 2006 paper ("Neutron Activation and X-Ray Fluorescence Analyses of Early Roman Age Bohemian Artifacts") that I saw bandied around Facebook with some excitement because those reading it thought it indicated that some Roman brass contained up to 85% zinc. They were referring to Table 2, apparently, which they were reading wrong: the table shows only one entry for an artifact with a zinc level above 26%. The "85.7" in the Zn column under "Drinking Horns" is saying that 85.7 percent of the drinking horns in the sample have 0-2 percent zinc.
There is no evidence of which I'm aware of Roman brass with a zinc content greater than 30%. That means there is no evidence that the metals in the Nova Scotia sword could have been made in ancient Rome.
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It's interesting to note that Pulitzer's attempts to discredit the testing of the sword have now moved from claiming a conspiracy to fake the results of the test (by swapping swords) to claiming that Brosseau's results are in line with what we expect of ancient Roman brass. This is not an insignificant shift, as he is basically admitting that his XRF results (which he still has not described in detail) are garbage compared to what Brosseau produced. I have a feeling he looked at Brosseau's summary of her analyses and realized there was no longer a path for him to claim that his alleged testing was somehow "superior" to hers. So now's he's left having to argue that the Romans could have indeed made that metal. Good luck with that argument - it's not a winner. 
Roman brass with 35% zinc?  There  you go again . . .
22 Comments
Gina Torresso
1/28/2016 09:57:01 am

Great Work Andy, I don't think any of us can thank you enough !!!

Reply
Randal Taylor
1/28/2016 10:02:09 am

Another splendid article put together by our resident researcher.

Great job!

Reply
Eric
1/28/2016 10:04:30 am

http://www.sportingbreakdown.com/image/sports/small/1206/this-is-true-basketball-dunk-posterized-sports-1340895973.jpg

Reply
Jonathan Feinstein
1/28/2016 10:04:56 am

Thank you, Andy.

That was very well-stated and corroborated. I wish I could say that Pulitzer will read it and be convinced that he is wrong, but I have come to the conclusion that either he is the most stupid man on Earth (which I do not believe is the case) or he has another agenda than establishing the truth of the matter through reason and evidence.
In short, he knows darned well that he is lying about the sword and all his other soi dissant evidence as well. This is about feeding his ego and the less actual work he has to do the better. Some charlatans of his ilk will manufacture physical evidence or plant otherwise authentic artifacts, but he cannot be bothered to do even that much. It's far easier to cry "Conspiracy!" and "Look. See? They really are out to get me."

Well, okay, it's a conspiracy of sorts, but the conspiracy is not to obscure the truth with fanciful and insubstantial claims nor is it a conspiracy to hide the truth. We're all conspiring to prove just what is true about history and archaeology and to show how false claims really are false. Naughty us.

Reply
Andy White
1/28/2016 11:03:51 am

My guess is that he knows he's spreading misinformation. The theatrics are intended for those that he knows will eat them up. If you've already decided what the "truth" is, why ask any more questions? The only question becomes "why are others trying to prevent me from telling you the truth?" It's silly.

Reply
Rose McDonald
1/28/2016 10:10:41 am

JHP will probably intensify his focus on his recently "discovered"
Spear of Destiny, or maybe the 90-foot stone he claims is in the possession of unnamed parties. Yawn....

Reply
Bob Bell
1/28/2016 07:12:13 pm

ahh the 90-foot stone that the epoch times says "From a visual comparison, Pulitzer has surmised that it is made of a perceptibly distinctive type of stone called Imperial porphyry"(only found in Italy) so are we now to believe that Romans decided that an important part of the quest was to pack a huge bloody slab of stone

Reply
Cleo
1/28/2016 10:32:40 am

I actually liked what was mentioned by the good Dr. when she said that the upper limits are actually process related. There's no reason Roman brass couldn't contain higher zinc except that the processes used limit that.

To claim that there is zinc in artifacts at higher percentages really implies new methods of manufacture. That would be something that would have been necessarily studied already. If it hasn't it is because there is no need to look for other methods based on the existing artifacts falling within the known limits of the process used.

It would much better to highlight his bone headed claims about absence of silicon in brass as proof of antiquity. He really stepped in it there.

Reply
Andy White
1/28/2016 10:43:15 am

What did he say about that? I missed it. I've stopped listening to the rants and have focused on reading things he writes down.

Reply
Bobby B.
1/28/2016 12:55:46 pm

I think you mean the things he copy/pastes, Andy.

Bob Bell
1/28/2016 07:15:42 pm

yep that was one of his claims that the test didn't show any silicon that all modern brass contains

Peter Geuzen
1/28/2016 10:38:14 am

Good timing, here's his audio version:

https://soundcloud.com/investigatinghistory/exposed-history-channel-producers-hid-history-from-you-oak-island-roman-sword-faked-tests-exposed

Given firstly that he consistently states the incorrect percent zinc as 30% and not 35% tells you right away he is incapable. So there is going to be a 200 page paper referring to 500 tests and pieces of literature that confirm his rant. Notice he never once says in his rant what these alleged references use as the percent zinc in Roman times. If the sword dies his whole house of cards comes down. Desperation in his tone now.

Reply
Andy White
1/28/2016 10:40:57 am

I can't listen to him anymore (neither for reasons of time nor energy), so until he writes something down somewhere it doesn't exist to me. I applaud anyone who can sit through one of the SoundCloud things.

Reply
Eric
1/28/2016 01:06:45 pm

His acolytes and groupies won't read 200 page papers even if he managed to produce one. He knows that, hell, he counts on that. The man can barely put together a coherent sentence on paper. He banks on the fact his fanboys interpret academic, archaeological and scientific evidence as part of the "conspiracy to hide the truth" which we are part of (although I have yet to get my hood and super secret decoder ring)

Evidence like this-
"This alloy (from the Greek ορειχαλκοζ) was introduced to Roman use at the end of the Republican Period or at the beginning of the Augustan Period, mainly due to a need to mint some coins (sesterces, duponds and semi-axes). The techniques the Romans used are still not accurately known, even if some fleeting mention by Pliny leads us to hypothesize that it was not obtained by directly adding zinc to copper, but rather by cementation. In any case, the composition of the alloy was not a constant percentage over time and this is often a valid clue for quite reliable dating. As a general rule the quantity of copper tends to diminish quickly in comparison with zinc. At the end of the Republic and at the beginning of the reign of Augustus, 92-93% of copper and 5-6% of zinc are recorded, together with small percentages of tin and lead (which can at times be completely missing), but already at the start of Tiberius’ reign the quantity of copper has diminished to 76-77% and that of zinc increased instead to 22-23%. Never in all the duration of The Empire – and while orichalcum was used – were such high quantities of copper recorded as towards the end of the Republic/early Empire. In the case of the tested pugio we have the following percentages: copper 93.2%, zinc 5.8% and lead 0.99%, which are compatible with those used at the end of the Republican Period, which confirms the above-mentioned dating."

Saliola and Casprini, "Pugio-Gladius Brevius Est", pg 10.

Reply
Eric
1/28/2016 01:19:40 pm

The authors are referring to a specific type of brass used in decorative inlay work on Roman weapons, as seen here in a fantastic example of a high ranking officer's pugio from the legionary castra at Mainz (Mogontiacum), not of the composition of the weapon itself, since Roman weapons were made of iron and mild steel, not brass.


http://www.romancoins.info/a-2005-sword.JPG

Jonathan Feinstein
1/28/2016 01:29:25 pm

Just FTR, A friend of mine who used to teach Classics at Ole Miss, told me the other day that some swords were cast in bronze (NB she said bronze, not brass) but they were not meant to fight with. They were used for their pretty golden color in gladiatorial parades (possibly in Triumphs as well - my addition). Since we were just chatting, though she did not given me any sources to document it...

Eric
1/28/2016 02:17:44 pm

here's what I've come up with in terms of Roman votive offerings of cast bronze swords-little tiny things.

https://finds.org.uk/database/search/results/objecttype/votive+model/broadperiod/ROMAN

As for the cast bronze gladiatorial parade sword theory, I've yet to come up with ANY such sword in any museum collection or in academic papers. The only gladii that show up are the authentic regular legionary iron forged weapons. The only bronze "Roman" sword we have any examples of are Fake Hercules Swords, mostly attributed to a mysterious original supposedly in "a Naples museum" that no one has ever been able to come up with.

Secondarily, and with due respect to your friend, a gladiatorial event would have demanded the display of the real, lethal weapons, not what would have been considered children's toys. The gladiator would have considered it demeaning, and the crowd would have wanted to see the combat weapons of gladiators. Again, no mosaics, frescoes or visual evidence show a special "parade gladius" nor do any appear in the archaeology-including the discoveries of gladiator graves in York, England or Turkey.

Jonathan Feinstein
1/28/2016 05:06:26 pm

The bronze weapons would not have been used in a Gladitorial event and possibly not inside the arena.

However, I have not personally found any Roman bronze swords that I could say were definitely Roman and not someone's misidentification, so I have only my friend's say so on that and she is not in tonight. If she was not mistaken (and any of us can be) she probably got it from someone's contemporaneous description of rather than having seen such blades in a museum. She did agree, however, that the Hercules hilts did not look remotely authentic hilts to her and a bronze blade, even for parade use would have had the same sort of grip a real iron or mild steel gladius would have.

Eric
1/28/2016 06:32:44 pm

Right. The Romans didn't go in for anthropomorphic sword hilts, but the Celts did on very rare examples-the North Grimston Sword the most known (and also the most copied-a number of "authentic Celtic swords" floating around look suspiciously similar in fake patina to the Fake Hercules Swords-there could possibly be a connection between the MOAFHS and "Celtic" fakes to be sold to tourists around Hallstatt and La Tene sites when Celtic archaeology boomed in popularity among European bourgeois amateurs in the late 19th century. If you can track her source, I'd love to see it-that description might have been the garbled and misunderstood inspiration of the entire family of Fake Hercules Swords-as I think the MOAFHS design is either based on a fantasy design or, considering your friend's information, a misunderstood translation of a classical primary source, to be marketed to gullible tourists.

Eric
1/28/2016 07:08:01 pm

Ask her to check Tertullian-apparently he described a pompa.

Eric
1/28/2016 10:49:27 am

Guess the Facebookers didn't read paragraph 3.1 of the paper by Fikrle et al- "In the rest of artifacts (parts of drinking horns and utensils), zinc was very rare. The typical alloy of drinking horns was tin or leaded bronze"

Reply
Joe Scales
1/28/2016 01:18:11 pm

What struck me funny from Pullitzer/Philyaw's rant was his alleged quote from David Blankenship: “We got him good for you. It’s about time — maybe he will shut up now”

If accurately attributed, it would seem to indicate our hero was set up from the get go in regard to the leaking of the sword discovery plot line.

Reply



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