A decorated Chinese dagger: evidence for ancient amalgam tinning

The use of mercury-tin amalgam for ornamentation on a bronze dagger (attributed to China or Inner Mongolia of the Warring States period, 475-221 B.C.) is proposed on the basis of technical analyses and simulation experiments. This ornamentation technique, though well known from ancient written sources, has been detected in the laboratory for the first time, due to the relative scarcity of ornamented bronzes of this type in collections and to the relatively small residual mercury content that can be expected after high-temperature firing of the amalgam during manufacture and subsequent corrosion processes.