Bronze Age or Iron Age? Age of Nebra Sky Disk is disputed

[BillTre]

The age of the Nebra (from Germany) Sky Disk (claimed to be the oldest known representation of the heavens) is in dispute.
It was found in the black market, so provenance is unclear.
NY Times article here.

 

[Vanadium 50]

There are definitely some hinky things about the Nebra Disk.

The "Pleiades" shows seven stars, but that's the myth and not the astronomy - most cultures (e.g. Greece, Japan) count six. (The connection with mythology is unclear, as one was supposed to be invisible for marrying a mortal. Thing is, that was Merope, 5th brightest, magnitude 4.) It suggests contact with Hellenic culture.

I'm wondering if there is any lead in the metal. Pb-210 might tell us something. One could even date the disk, although not right away - it would involve burying modern lead in the same place.

 

[fresh_42]

Particle accelerator + C14 from co-found

The Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing irradiated the gold plating at the BESSY particle accelerator with high-intensity X-rays. It was found that the gold plating does not have a uniform composition. The sky disc was probably created in several chronologically separated phases. These results agree with another finding. Christian-Heinrich Wunderlich from the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology in Halle extracted around 0.6 mg of carbon from a piece of birch bark that was found on one of the swords. Its radiocarbon dating showed that the piece of wood dates from around 1600 to 1560 BC.

versus doubt of the co in co-found + similarities of motifs

In September 2020, the two researchers Rupert Gebhard and Rüdiger Krause published a controversial reassessment according to which the disk should not come from the early Bronze Age, but rather from the Iron Age (approx. 800 to 50 BC). After analyzing the context of the find, they saw no convincing evidence that the artefacts found together with the disk and undisputedly from the Bronze Age would form an ensemble belonging to the disk. Gebhard and Krause also pointed out similarities between the sky disk and pictorial motifs from the Iron Age.

I go with the 1st version, especially as it offers the possibility that those motifs might have been added later.

 

[Klystron]

The dim dead sister appears with the Pleiades throughout science fiction and pre-science myths and legend. Iron Age reworking of an older artifact, if correct, still retains value. In fine art, famous forgeries often eclipse the original.

In one SF novel future human visitors from Neptune's moon Triton bury a bronze age astrolabe in the rubble of a Mongolian archeological dig as an ironic artistic statement to future archeologists.