Perceived as a material and a colour, gold has assumed major societal roles. It has been used as a medium of exchange and in the production of objects with cultural, social, and religious meanings. Being a finite resource, gold has often been subjected to recycling processes. Over time, some objects were reused to make new objects and others were melted down to use the resulting gold as raw material. These operations can be approached using an appropriate analytical protocol. Analytical challenges raised by studies on the reuse and recycling of gold are discussed in the given examples, some of them focusing on coins and others on jewellery and ritual objects. To illustrate the different levels of analytical difficulty, some of these objects were made during times of gold scarcity and others in periods of gold influx.

中文翻译：

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关于黄金回收。物理化学观点

作为一种材料和颜色，黄金承担了重要的社会角色。它已被用作交换媒介，并用于生产具有文化、社会和宗教意义的物品。作为一种有限资源，黄金经常经过回收处理。随着时间的推移，一些物品被重复使用以制造新物品，而另一些则被熔化以使用由此产生的黄金作为原材料。可以使用适当的分析协议来处理这些操作。在给定的例子中讨论了黄金再利用和回收研究提出的分析挑战，其中一些集中在硬币上，另一些集中在珠宝和仪式物品上。为了说明不同程度的分析难度，其中一些物品是在黄金稀缺时期制造的，而另一些则是在黄金涌入时期制造的。