Ancient metallic objects, analyzing

Most certainly, we all ask ourselves when reading the results of an analysis of an ancient metal object, Would I have gotten a comparable result if I had sampled and analyzed that object by my own techniques This question may seem simple to answer, but the problem has many aspects which must be considered. Variation in the techniques and methods of sampling is the first aspect. We decided to eliminate this variation in our initial study by taking the samples ourselves (see below). Thus, this part of the program concentrates on analytical techniques. 

---