Investigations on Ancient Bronze Drums from Majiang, Guangxi, P. R. China

Abstract The scientific and technological archaeological research of bronze drum is an important means to reveal the intrinsic scientific properties of bronze drums. In order to characterize the original scheme of polychromy and the used materials, six samples were collected from six different Majiang-type bronze drums from Hechi city of Guangxi province of China in Guangxi Museum. The composition of all the samples were determined by using scanning electron microscopy with Energy Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. All the bronze drums contain mainly Cu, Sn, Pb and As. The X-ray diffraction analysis was carried out to analyze the component phases in the sample of the bronze drum. The Rietveld refinement was performed to do the quantitative phase analysis for the samples of the bronze drum (No. 0076 and No0093). The X-ray diffraction analysis and Rietveld structure refinement results show that No.0076 bronze drum contains four compounds: As0.04Cu0.96, Pb, Cu3Sn, and Cu10Sn3. Their mass percentage contents are 74.9 (4) wt.%, 5 (1) wt.%, 10 (1) wt.%, and 10 (1) wt.%, respectively. The No.0093 bronze drum contains five compounds Cu, Pb, Cu3Sn, As0.2Cu1.8, and Cu10Sn3, with mass percentages of 54.4 (5) wt.%, 5.3 (8) wt.%, and 9 (1) wt.%, 19 (1) wt.% and 12 (1) wt.%, respectively.