Study of patinas from foundry ovens in the Royal Artillery Factory of Seville (XVII century)

Abstract

The main objective of the present work is to determine the structure of the strata composing the coating of the walls in the areas identified in the Seville Artillery Factory as “old foundry” and “new foundry” and perform the chemical characterization of the same with the specific purpose of identifying the possible metallic deposits that could have accumulated during the factory foundry activity carried out in the building from the end of the 16th century until the XX (Sobrino 2011). It should be noted that the painting of the walls has successively hid the possible patinas; hence the stratigraphic series accumulated over time corresponds to an alternate sequence (Barbero, 2013). The samples were initially evaluated by optical microscopy to determine the existing strata. By means of X-ray microfluorescence and electron microscopy, the particles containing metals were identified and their chemical composition determined (Berthold, 2009). This analysis confirmed the hypothesis of the presence of heavy metal elements, especially the presence of iron, and also in the different samples, in minor proportions, although relevant (copper, zinc and, in isolated cases, lead and nickel). All of them respond to their possible presence in the materials used in the foundry.