LAUSR

Abstract Variscite is a green, lustrous mineral similar to turquoise. While both variscite and turquoise are aluminum-bearing, hydrated phosphate minerals, variscite contains no copper. We applied three kinds of portable analytical instruments to a nondestructive, on-site analysis of Late Bronze Age (LBA) artifacts excavated from a royal tomb at Qatna, Syria, including a portable micro-Raman spectrometer, an X-ray powder diffractometer, and an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Variscite was positively identified as the raw material for a number of items from the Qatna tomb. Our analytical result is the first scientific evidence of the use of variscite for personal ornaments during the LBA in the Middle East. Because differentiating between variscite and turquoise is difficult with the naked eye, it is possible that variscite artifacts were misidentified as turquoise among Middle Eastern LBA items excavated from other archaeological sites.