This paper details the application of a statistical method for the chronological discrimination of silver coins using counts per second trace elemental, inter‐elemental ratios. The statistical method described is based on a method that has been applied to similar archaeological materials to determine their provenance. The method makes use of the inter‐element association patterns of multi‐element analytical data determined using laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry (LA‐ICP‐MS). The majority of the 266 coins analysed for this study have already been successfully identified by their mint markings. The data from LA‐ICP‐MS analyses, together with what is known about the coins through visual identification, were used to discriminate the reigning sovereign, and in the case of Mexico, the year of minting, of individual coins within the elemental fingerprint of different mints. Subsequently, unidentified coins can be placed in the confusion matrix, and their trace element information used to identify their year of minting when compared with other, identified coins from the same mint. The interpretational statistical technique linear discriminant analysis (LDA) was used to explore an identification of year of minting of coins that have previously not been identified by other means based on a statistical comparison against a database of compositional analysis of silver coins of known year of minting.

中文翻译：

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使用激光烧蚀电感耦合等离子体质谱（LA-ICP-MS）基于元素间比率对银币进行时间区分

本文详细介绍了一种统计方法的应用，该方法使用每秒计数的微量元素，元素间比率对银币进行时间区分。所描述的统计方法基于已应用于相似考古材料以确定其来源的方法。该方法利用了通过激光烧蚀-电感耦合等离子体质谱法（LA-ICP-MS）确定的多元素分析数据的元素间关联模式。在这项研究中分析的266种硬币中的大多数已通过其薄荷标记成功鉴定。来自LA‐ICP‐MS分析的数据，以及通过视觉识别获得的有关硬币的信息，被用来区分在位的主权国家，在墨西哥，则是铸造年，不同造币厂的基本指纹内的各个硬币的组合。随后，可以将未识别的硬币放入混乱矩阵中，并将其痕量元素信息与来自同一薄荷的其他已识别硬币进行比较，以识别其铸造年份。解释性统计技术线性判别分析（LDA）用于基于与已知铸造年份的银币成分分析数据库的统计比较，探索以前没有通过其他方式确定的硬币铸造年份的标识。