Corrosion of some military equipment and ustensils discovered in the ancient site of Buridava

In the Dacian site from Ocniţa, Vâlcea County, identified with the ancient Buridava, a considerable number of pieces made of various alloys were discovered along the time, which led to the hypothesis of the existence here of an important craft center. Since the archaeological research is far from complete and it is obvious that the number of iron artifacts in situ and still undiscovered is probably quite large, we decided to choose a number of five pieces representing military equipment, but also utensils in common use because, through modern techniques for characterizing materials, but also through other methods, such as measuring the pH of the soil, to determine how the iron objects in situ are affected. Because, of all the alloys, those that contain a high percentage of iron are usually the most susceptible to degradation and corrosion, respectively, the present study aims to investigate a number of five such ancient objects. With the help of X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and soil pH measurement we try to reconstruct how the corrosion processes aroused and affected the analyzed parts.