The analysis was conducted in the spring and reviewed over the summer; Pernicka plans to publish the findings this year. He was able to compare them with his results from testing a few stray items of the Schliemann gold that remained in Berlin - apparently overlooked by the Russians in 1945.
Pernicka's conclusion:
The 24 pieces from Philadelphia all appeared to be of ancient manufacture. And they were indeed consistent with the gold Schliemann had excavated at Troy in the 1870s.
The gold in both collections was far from pure - containing as much as a third silver. Even more distinctive was the fact that both contained small but significant amounts of platinum - roughly 100 to 200 parts per million, suggesting the metal might even have been mined from the same river.
Also similar were the ratios between the amount of platinum and another metal, palladium.
"This points to the same geological source," Pernicka said.
That doesn't necessarily mean anything about where Penn's jewelry was made, who wore it, and where it was excavated, he said.
The analysis of the soil, on the other hand, provided information from the artifacts' resting place. Using a technique called neutron activation, Pernicka revealed the amounts of a wide array of elements contained in the dirt, from arsenic to zinc.
His finding: The composition was consistent with the soil in the Trojan plain. In particular, the dirt from the gold pendant contained a high level of arsenic - about 40 parts per million.
It was not proof of anything, but Pernicka said it was a good bet that Penn's enigmatic collection had come from somewhere in the region of Trojan influence: Turkey, Greece, or southeastern Europe.
More than 4,000 years after the jewelry is believed to have been buried, even though it had been taken from the ground without care, science had filled in some of the missing story.
"It's astounding," said Rose, the museum curator.
Twenty of the 24 pieces are on loan to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., where they were viewed this month by attendees of the Archaeological Institute of America's annual conference. The other four - golden pendants - remain at Penn, exhibited alongside the Mesopotamian artifacts whose stylistic similarity had intrigued the museum's curators in 1966.
That similarity - highlighted in the exhibit, called "Iraq's Ancient Past" - intrigues Pernicka as well. He has told museum officials that he would like to test the Mesopotamian gold.
That famous civilization had few of its own natural resources and would have had to import gold and other metals. Could the gold have come from Troy? Could itinerant craftsmen or traders have traveled back and forth between Troy and Mesopotamia long ago?
Someday also, if authorities are willing, Pernicka would like to test the Schliemann gold that remains in Moscow. He acknowledged that some Germans would like to see that treasure returned to Germany.
But as a scientist, Pernicka said his primary goal was the pursuit of knowledge.
And in that quest, he said:
"We are now only at the beginning."
Contact staff writer Tom Avril at 215-854-2430 or tavril@phillynews.com.
