Investigations on ancient bronze drums from Majiang, Guangxi, P. R. China

Six different types of Majiang bronze drums from Hechi City, Guangxi, China were collected from the Guangxi Museum to characterize the original scheme of polychromy and materials used for the drums. 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. Qualitative analysis of the structure by X-ray powder diffraction indicates that each of the six bronze drums contains four or five phases, namely (Cu, As), Pb, Cu 3 Sn, and Cu 10 Sn 3 or Cu, Pb, As 0.2 Cu 1.8 , Cu 3 Sn, and Cu 10 Sn 3 . The Rietveld structural refinement is performed first time for the quantitative analysis of ancient bronze drums and inorganic cultural relics. This paper reports the result.