ISO werft nieuw bestuur met filmpje

Sobere kleuren, stemmige muziek, trage camerabewegingen. De studenten van het ISO maken zich zorgen over het hoger onderwijs, zeggen ze in hun wervingsfilmpje, maar ze zien ook kansen.

Het is de eerste keer dat het ISO een promotiefilmpje heeft laten maken om studenten te bereiken. Al jaren wordt het steeds moeilijker om nieuwe bestuursleden te vinden voor de landelijke studentenorganisaties.

Voorzitter Sebastiaan Hameleers vreest dat er door de langstudeerboete misschien nog minder geïnteresseerden zullen solliciteren. “Dat zou ten onrechte zijn, want ze kunnen zich gewoon een jaar uitschrijven. Een bestuursjaar bij het ISO telt niet mee voor de langstudeerboete.”

Their cutting edges are sharp but show no traces of uses. Although socketed, they were never hafted. The hollow bronze axes of Geistingen, dating from the late bronze period (600 to 800 BC), present a true mystery to archaeologists. What were these objects used for?

“About 30 of them have been dug up in Flanders and the Netherlands,” says Janneke Nienhuis, who studied the bronze during her Master’s degree at the Centre for Archaeology, Art History and Science (Caas), a collaborative venture between TU Delft and Leiden University’s faculties of archaeology and art history.“Most of them were found near the town of Geistingen, hence their name.”

The material expert thouroughly examined the bronze in the hope of discovering how the Geistingen axes were made, which in turn might reveal something about their purpose. This spring she will publish her findings in the Journal of Archaeology in the Low Countries. The article however will probably only serve to deepen the mystery.

Nienhuis took samples from an axe from the Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen and from a specimen from the Gallo-Romeins Museum in Tongeren. Using optical and electron microscopy, she characterized the microstructures, and with X-Ray Fluorescence she determined their composition.
Both axes contain sulphur, lead and traces of iron, titanium, cobalt and zinc. There is probably no single ore in the world with which you can make an alloy with these characteristics. One would have had to mix different kinds of ores. Another possibility, which initially seems more plausible, is that the smiths made the materials by melting scrap or ingots that they had imported. Since no suitable ores for copper production were mined in the low countries, archaeologists believe this explanation makes more sense.

But Nienhuis doesn’t agree: “I found too many traces of sulphur, silver and lead. If the axes were made by (re-)melting scrap, you’d expect most of these traces to have dissipated in the slag. From an archaeological point of view it may seem strange, but I’m a proponent of the theory that the smiths used ores.” Needless to say, she adds, laughing, “this topic results in some very interesting discussions”.