Introduction: In Search of Gold
1 Erin Wayman, ‘Gold Seen in Neutron Star Debris’, Science News, CLXXXIV/4 (24 August 2013), p. 8.
2 Anne Wootton, ‘Earth’s Inner Fort Knox’, Discover, XXVII/9, p. 18.
3 Frank Reith et al., ‘Biomineralization of Gold: Biofilms on Bacterioform Gold’, Science New Series, CCCXIII/5784 (14 July 2006), pp. 233–6; Chad W. Johnston et al., ‘Gold Biomineralization by a Metallophore from a Gold-associated Microbe’, Nature Chemical Biology, IX/4 (2013), pp. 241–3.
4 Máirín Ní Cheallaigh, ‘Mechanisms of Monument-destruction in Nineteenth-century Ireland: Antiquarian Horror, Cromwell and Gold-dreaming’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature, CVIIC (2007), pp. 127–45; Frank Thone, ‘Nature Ramblings: The Gold Rush’, Science News-Letter, XLIII/10 (6 March 1943), p. 157.
5 Thomson Reuters GFMS Gold Survey (2014), p. 53, available at https://forms.thomsonreuters.com/gfms/
6 Strabo, Geography, trans. Howard Leonard Jones (Cambridge, MA, 1924), 11.2.19.
7 Otar Lordkipanidze, ‘The Golden Fleece: Myth, Euhemeristic Explanation and Archaeology,’ Oxford Journal of Archaeology, XX/1 (2001), pp. 1–38.
8 Juan Rodriguez Freyle, El Carnero: conquista y descubrimiento de el Nuevo Reino de Granada (1638), vol. I, p. 21.
9 Walter Raleigh, The Discovery of Guiana (1596).
10 Joyce Lorimer, ‘Introduction’ to Sir Walter Ralegh’s Discoverie of Guiana (Aldershot, 2006), p. lii.
11 Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, The Journey of Coronado, ed. and trans. George Parker Winship (New York, 1904), p. 174.
12 Timothy Lim, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005).
13 James A. Harrell and V. Max Brown, ‘The World’s Oldest Surviving Geological Map: The 1150 BC Turin Papyrus from Egypt’, Journal of Geology, C/1 (January 1992), pp. 3–18.
14 Yvonne J. Markowitz, ‘Nubian Adornment’, in Ancient Nubia: African Kingdoms on the Nile, ed. Marjorie M. Fisher (Cairo, 2012), pp. 186–99, 193.
15 John W. Blake, West Africa: Quest for God and Gold, 1454–1578 (London, 1937/1977).
16 Quoted in Malyn Newlitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668 (London, 2004), p. 27.
17 Herbert M. Cole and Doran H. Ross, The Arts of Ghana, exh. cat., Frederick S. Wight Gallery at the University of California, Los Angeles (1977), p. 134.
18 P. E. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A Life (New Haven, CT, 2001).
19 Herodotus, Histories 3.23.4, trans. George Rawlinson (London, 1859).
1 Wearable Gold
1 Jan Wisseman Christie, ‘Money and Its Uses in the Javanese States of the Ninth to Fifteenth Centuries AD’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, XXXIX/3 (1996), pp. 243–86, 249.
2 Ivan Ivanov, The Birth of European Civilization (Sofia, 1992). The Copper Age, a fluid designation generally associated with the fifth millennium BCE, was an early stage of the Bronze Age during which copper smelting was practised but without alloying copper with tin to make the more durable bronze. Gold mining generally followed copper mining and goldsmithing generally followed coppersmithing.
3 Thomson Reuters GFMS Gold Survey (2014), p. 53, https://forms.thomsonreuters.com/gfms, p. 8.
4 Colin Renfrew, ‘Varna and the Social Context of Early Metallurgy’, Antiquity, LII (1978), pp. 199–203.
5 Ivan Ivanov and Maya Avramova, Varna Necropolis: The Dawn of European Civilization (Sofia, 2000), pp. 46–50.
6 Hans Wolfgang Müller and Eberhard Thiem, Gold of the Pharaohs (Cornell, NY, 1999), p. 60.
7 ‘Behind the Mask of Agamemnon’, Archaeology, LII/4 (July/August 1999), pp. 51–9.
8 Bernabé Cobo, Inca Religion and Customs, trans. and ed. Roland Hamilton (Austin, TX, 1990), p. 250.
9 Ralph E. Giese, The Royal Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva, 1960), p. 33.
10 Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet VIII, column ii.
11 André Emmerich, Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon: Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art (Seattle, WA, 1965), p. xxi.
12 Ibid., p. 128.
13 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA, 1924), 33.8, available at https://archive.org.
14 Tertullian, Apologeticus, trans. Jeremy Collier (London, 1889), 6, available at www.tertullian.org.
15 Clara Estow, ‘The Politics of Gold in Fourteenth Century Castile’, Mediterranean Studies, VIII (North Dartmouth, MA, 1999), pp. 129–42.
16 Oviedo, Historia general y natural de los Indios (Madrid, 1853), p. 118.
17 Rebecca Zorach, Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold: Abundance and Excess in the French Renaissance (Chicago, IL, 2005), p. 118.
18 Joycelyne G. Russell, The Field of the Cloth of Gold: Men and Manners in 1520 (London, 1969).
19 Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200 (Oxford, 1998), p. 21.
20 Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII.xvii:1–7.
21 See for example Lettres patentes de declaration du roy, pour la reformation du luxe . . . (Rouen, 1634).
22 See N. B. Harte, ‘State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-Industrial England’, in Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England, ed. D. C. Coleman and A. H. John (London, 1976), pp. 132–65.
23 Michel de Montaigne, Essais, trans. Charles Cotton (London, 1870), p. 183.
24 Martin du Bellay, Mémoires de Martin du Bellay (Paris, 1569), p. 16.
25 John Fisher, Here After Ensueth Two Fruytfull Sermons . . . (London, 1532), f. B2r.
26 On the development of modern gold cloth, see J.P.P. Higgins, Cloth of Gold: A History of Metallised Textiles (London, 1993).
27 Marcel Proust, A La Recherche du temps perdu (Paris, 1987–9), vol. III, pp. 895–6.
28 Deborah Nadoolman Landis, Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design (New York, 2007), p. 244.
29 See Krista Thompson, ‘The Sound of Light: Reflections on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-hop’, Art Bulletin, XCI/4 (December 2009), pp. 481–505.
2 Gold, Religion and Power
1 Thanapol (Lamduan) Chadchaidee, Thailand in my Youth (Bangkok, 2003), pp. 59–68.
2 David Lorton, trans., The Gods of Egypt (Ithaca, NY, 2001), p. 44; Sydney Hervé Aufrère, L’Univers minéral dans la pensée egyptienne (Cairo, 2001), vol. II, p. 380.
3 David Gordon White, The Alchemical Body (Chicago, IL, 1996), pp. 189–91.
4 Adam Herring, ‘Shimmering Foundation: The Twelve-angled Stone of Inca Cusco’, Critical Inquiry, XXXVII/1 (Autumn 2010), pp. 60–105, p. 97; Gordon McEwan, The Incas: New Perspectives (New York, 2008), p. 156.
5 Herodotus, History, IV. See also Michael L. Walter, Buddhism and Empire (Leiden, Boston and Tokyo, 2009), pp. 287–91.
6 V. N. Basilov, Nomads of Eurasia, exh. cat. (Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 1989).
7 A. Kyerematen, ‘The Royal Stools of Ashanti’, Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, XXXIX/1 (January 1969), pp. 1–10, 3–4.
8 Dominic Janes, God and Gold in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 55–60.
9 Ibid., pp. 110–12.
10 Ibid., pp. 74–5.
11 St Jerome, Letter XXII.
12 Alain George, The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy (London, 2010), p. 91.
13 Ibid., pp. 74–5.
14 Christopher De Hamel, The British Library Guide to Manuscript Illumination: History and Techniques (Toronto, 2001), pp. 69–70.
15 Peter T. Struck, Birth of the Symbol: Ancient Readers at the Limits of their Texts (Princeton, NJ, 2009), p. 231.
16 Erwin Panofsky, trans., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St Denis and its Art Treasures (Princeton, NJ, 1946), pp. 101, 107.
17 Susan Solway, ‘Ancient Numismatics and Medieval Art: The Numismatic Sources of Some Medieval Imagery’, PhD dissertation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois (1981), pp. 70–71.
18 Thiofrid of Echternach, Flores epytaphii sanctorum, quoted in Martina Bagnoli, ‘The Stuff of Heaven: Materials and Craftsmanship in Medieval Reliquaries’, in Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, ed. Martina Bagnoli (London, 2011), pp. 137–47 (p. 137).
19 Cynthia Hahn, ‘The Spectacle of the Charismatic Body: Patrons, Artists, and Body-part Reliquaries’, in Treasures, ed. Bagnoli, p. 170.
20 Pamela Sheingorn, ed. and trans., The Book of Sainte Foy (Philadelphia, PA, 1995), p. 78.
21 Erik Thunø, ‘The Golden Altar of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan’, in Decorating the Lord’s Table: On the Dynamics Between Image and Altar in the Middle Ages, ed. Søren Kaspersen and Erik Thunø (Copenhagen, 2006), pp. 63–78, 67.
22 Ibid., p. 70.
23 Ibid.
24 Yi-t’ung Wang, trans., The Record of Buddhist Monasteries in Lo-Yang (Princeton, NJ, 1984), pp. 16, 20–21.
25 Richard H. Davis, ed., Images, Miracles, and Authority in Asian Religious Traditions (Boulder, CO, 1998), p. 25.
26 John Kieschnick, The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture (Princeton, NJ, 2003), p. 108.
27 Ibid., p. 12.
28 Eric Robert Reinders, ‘Buddhist Rituals of Obeisance and the Contestation of the Monk’s Body in Medieval China’, PhD dissertation, University of California at Santa Barbara (1997), p. 65.
29 Apinan Poshyananda, Montien Boonma: Temple of the Mind (New York, 2003), p. 35.
3 Gold as Money
1 Herodotus, Histories, trans. A. D. Godfrey (Cambridge MA, 1920), 1.29–45, 1.85–9, available at www.perseus.tufts.edu; Archilochus, fragment 14.
2 Andrew Ramage and Paul Craddock, King Croesus’ Gold: Excavations at Sardis and the History of Gold Refining (Cambridge, MA, 2000).
3 Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, IL, 1951), 6.234–6.
4 Lady Charlotte Guest, The Mabinogion (London, 1838–49).
5 Sitta von Reden, Money in Ptolemaic Egypt: From the Macedonian Conquest to the End of the Third Century BC (Cambridge, 2007).
6 Aristophanes, The Frogs, trans. David Barrett (New York, 1964), pp. 19–24.
7 The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and Romans, ed. W. V. Harris (Oxford, 2008).
8 Cited in Homer Dubs, ‘An Ancient Chinese Stock of Gold’, Journal of Economic History, XX/1 (May 1942), pp. 36–9.
9 Ban Gu, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, trans. Homer Dubs, vol. III (Baltimore, MD, 1955), chapter 99, p. 458.
10 Homer Dubs, ‘Wang Mang and His Economic Reforms’, T’oung Pao (second series), XXXV/4 (1940), pp. 219–65.
11 Ban Gu, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, vol. III, chapter 99, p. 437.
12 Quoted in Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge, 1974), vol. V, part 2, p. 259.
13 China Institute Gallery, New York, Providing for the Afterlife: ‘Brilliant Artifacts’ from Shandong, exh. cat. (2005).
14 Ban Gu, The History of the Former Han Dynasty, quoted in Robert Wicks, Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia: The Development of Indigenous Monetary Systems to AD 1400 (Ithaca, NY, 1992), p. 22.
15 Wicks, Money, Markets, and Trade in Early Southeast Asia, p. 25.
16 Steven Bryan, The Gold Standard at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Rising Powers, Global Money, and the Age of Empire (New York, 2010).
17 Ibid., p. 45.
18 Glyn Davies, A History of Money: From Ancient Times to the Present Day (Cardiff, 2002), p. 376.
19 Quoted in ibid., p. 380.
20 Davies, A History of Money, p. 516.
21 Ibid., p. 523.
22 Bradley A. Hansen, ‘The Fable of the Allegory: The Wizard of Oz in Economics’, Journal of Economic Education, XXXIII/3 (Summer 2002), pp. 254–64.
23 David Tripp, Illegal Tender: Gold, Greed, and the Mystery of the Lost 1933 Double Eagle (New York, 2013).
24 Susanna Kim, ‘Judge Says 10 Rare Gold Coins Worth $80 Million Belong to Uncle Sam’, ABC News (online), 6 September 2012, http://abcnews.go.com.
4 Gold as a Medium of Art
1 ‘China, §XIII, 20: Paper’, Grove Dictionary of Art.
2 Francis Augustus MacNutt, De Orbe Novo: The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D’Anghera (New York and London, 1912), vol. I, p. 220.
3 Antonio Averlino (Filarete), Treatise on Architecture, trans. John R. Spencer (New Haven, CT, and London, 1965), p. 320 (187r). Cited in Luke Syson and Dora Thornton, Objects of Virtue (Los Angeles, CA, 2001), p. 89.
4 Thomas Sturge Moore, Albert Durer (London and New York, 1905), p. 147.
5 Joel W. Grossman, ‘An Ancient Gold Worker’s Tool Kit: The Earliest Metal Technology in Peru’, Archaeology, XXV/4 (1972), pp. 270–75.
6 Heather Lechtman, ‘Andean Value Systems and the Development of Prehistoric Metallurgy’, Technology and Culture, XXV/1 (January 1984), pp. 1–36.
7 Richard L. Burger, ‘Chavín’, in Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks, ed. Elizabeth Hill Boone (Washington, DC, 1996), pp. 45–86, 50, 67–70.
8 André Emmerich, Sweat of the Sun and Tears of the Moon: Gold and Silver in Pre-Columbian Art (Seattle, WA, 1965), p. xix. See also M. Noguez et al., ‘About the Pre-Hispanic Au-Pt “Sintering” Technique for Making Alloys’, Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, V/5 (2006), pp. 38–43.
9 Heather Lechtman, ‘The Inka, and Andean Metallurgical Tradition’, in Variations in the Expression of Inka Power, ed. R. Matos, R. Burger and C. Morris (Washington, DC, 2007) pp. 314–15.
10 Ibid., pp. 322–3.
11 Lechtman, ‘Andean Value Systems’, p. 32.
12 Lechtman, ‘The Inka’, pp. 319–20.
13 Ibid., p. 313.
14 Pedro de Cieza de León, The Second Part of the Chronicle of Peru, ed. Sir Clements Robert Markham (London, 1883), pp. 85–6.
15 Adam Herring, ‘Shimmering Foundation: The Twelve-angled Stone of Inca Cusco’, Critical Inquiry, XXXVII/1 (Chicago, IL, 2010), p. 89.
16 María Alicia Uribe Villegas and Marcos Martinón Torres, ‘Composition, Colour and Context in Muisca Votive Metalwork (Colombia, AD 600–1800)’, Antiquity, LXXXVI (2012), pp. 772–91, p. 777.
17 Dorothy Hosler, ‘West Mexican Metallurgy: Revisited and Revised’, Journal of World Prehistory, XXII/3 (2009), pp. 185–212.
18 Emmerich, Sweat of the Sun, p. XX, citing F. T. de Benavete Motolinía, Historia de los Indios de la Nueva España, Colección de documentos para la historia de México, vol. I (Mexico City, 1858), vol. I, ch. xiii.
19 Hernán Cortés, Despatches of Hernando Cortés, the Conqueror of Mexico, Addressed to the Emperor Charles V, trans. and ed. George Folsom (New York, 1843), p. 10.
20 Christian F. Feest, ‘The Collecting of American Indian Artifacts in Europe, 1493–1750’, in America in European Consciousness, 1493–1750, ed. Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Williamsburg, VA, 1995), pp. 324–60.
21 John Cherry, Goldsmiths (Toronto, 1992), pp. 68–9.
22 Martina Bagnoli, ‘The Stuff of Heaven: Materials and Craftmanship in Medieval Reliquaries’, in Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, ed. Martina Bagnoli (London, 2011), p. 138.
23 R. W. Lightbown, ‘Ex-votos in Gold and Silver: A Forgotten Art’, Burlington Magazine, CXXI/915 (1979), pp. 352–7, 359, 353. Canonico Pietro Paolo Raffaelli, ‘Brevissima indicatio potius quam descriptio donorum quibus alma domus olim Nazarena, nunc lauretana deiparae virginis decoratur’, in Lauretanae historiae libri quinque, ed. Orazio Torsellini (Venice, 1727), p. 387.
24 Emmerich, Sweat of the Sun, p. xxi, citing E. G. Squier, ‘More about the Gold Discoveries of the Isthmus’, Harper’s Weekly, 20 August 1859.
25 Syson and Thornton, Objects of Virtue, pp. 102–8.
26 Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, trans. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York, 2007), p. 187.
27 Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Art of the Goldsmith in Late Fifteenth-century Germany (New Haven, CT, 2006), p. 25.
28 Ibid., p. 27.
29 Jaroslav Folda, ‘Sacred Objects with Holy Light: Byzantine Icons with Chrysography’, in Byzantine Religious Culture: Studies in Honor of Alice-Mary Talbot, ed. Denis Sullivan, Elizabeth Fisher and Stratis Papaioannou (Leiden, 2012), p. 155.
30 See Irma Passeri, ‘Gold Coins and Gold Leaf in Early Italian Paintings’, in The Matter of Art, ed. Christy Anderson, Anne Dunlop and Pamela Smith (Manchester, 2015), pp. 97–115.
31 Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting, trans. John Spencer (New Haven, CT, 1966), p. 85.
32 Julia Bryan Wilson, Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley, CA, 2009), pp. 65–6.
33 Lisa Gralnick, Lisa Gralnick, The Gold Standard, exh. cat., Bellevue Arts Museum, Bellevue, Washington (2010).
34 Sarah Lowndes, ‘Learned By Heart: The Paintings of Richard Wright’, in Richard Wright, exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery, London (New York, 2010), p. 59.
35 Richard Wright, ‘Artist Richard Wright on How He Draws’, www.theguardian.com, 19 September 2009.
5 From Alchemy to Outer Space: Gold in Science
1 Mark S. Morrisson, Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (Oxford, 2007).
2 Francis Bacon, The Two Bookes of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning Divine and Humane (Oxford, 1605), 22V.
3 Theophilus, On Divers Arts, trans. John G. Hawthorne and Cyril Stanley Smith (Mineola, NY, 2012), pp. 36–8.
4 See Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1958), vol. I, p. 194, and Jack Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt (London, 1970), p. 54.
5 M. Berthelot, Introduction à l’étude de la chimie des anciens et du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1899), p. 20.
6 Lindsay, Origins of Alchemy in Graeco-Roman Egypt, pp. 60–61.
7 Stanton J. Linden, ed., The Alchemy Reader: from Hermes Trismegistus to Isaac Newton (New York, 2003), p. 22.
8 Sydney Hervé Aufrère, L’Univers minéral dans la pensée egyptienne (Cairo, 2001), pp. 377–9, 389–91.
9 Nathan Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies (Cambridge, MA, 1968), pp. 151–8.
10 James Ware, Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the China of AD 320: The ‘Nei Pien’ of Ko Hung (Mineola, NY, 1981), p. 74.
11 Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen, Science and Civilization in China (Cambridge, 1974), vol. V, part 2, section 33, part 1, pp. 115–20.
12 Sivin, Chinese Alchemy, p. 25. Needham and Lu, Science and Civilization in China, p. 13.
13 Ibid., pp. 12–13.
14 Ware, Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the China of AD 320, pp. 267–8; Needham and Lu, Science and Civilization in China, pp. 68–71.
15 Ware, Alchemy, Medicine and Religion in the China of AD 320, p. 50.
16 Fabrizio Pregadio, Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China (Stanford, CA, 2006), p. 125.
17 Ku Yung, ‘History of the Former Han’, in Doctors, Diviners, and Magicians of Ancient China, ed. and trans. Kenneth J. DeWoskin (New York, 1983), p. 38.
18 Philippe Charlier et al., ‘A Gold Elixir of Youth in the 16th Century French Court’, British Medical Journal, 339 (16 December 2009).
19 Frank E. Grizzard, George Washington: A Biographical Companion (Santa Barbara, CA, 2002), p. 105.
20 See Paul Elliott, ‘Abraham Bennet, FRS (1749–1799): A Provincial Electrician in Eighteenth-century England’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, LIII/1 (January 1999), pp. 59–78.
21 Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (New York, 1998), pp. 1–6, 132–42.
22 Hernán Cortés, Letters from Mexico, trans. Anthony Pagden (New Haven, CT, 2001), p. 29.
23 Francisco López de Gómara, La Conquista de México, ed. José Luis Rojas (Madrid, 1987), p. 187, cited in Hugh Thomas, The Conquest of Mexico (London, 1993), p. 178.
24 A. G. Debus, ‘Becher, Johann Joachim’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. C. C. Gillispie, vol. I (New York, 1970), pp. 548–51.
25 ‘American Swindler in London: One of the Rothschilds Said to have been a Victim’, New York Times, 13 May 1891.
26 Brett J. Stubbs, ‘“Sunbeams from Cucumbers”: An Early Twentieth-century Gold-from-seawater Extraction Scheme in Northern New South Wales’, Australasian Historical Archaeology, XXVI (2008), pp. 5–12.
27 ‘What Would Result if Gold were Made?’, New York Times, 6 October 1912.
1 Clifford E. Trafzer and Joel R. Hyer, eds, Exterminate Them: Written Accounts of the Murder, Rape, and Slavery of Native Americans during the California Gold Rush, 1848–1868 (Lansing, MI, 1999), p. ix.
2 Ovid, Metamorphoses, IV:604–62.
3 Firuza Abdullaeva, ‘Kingly Flight: Nimrūd, Kay Kāvus, Alexander, or Why the Angel Has the Fish’, Persica, 23 (2010), pp. 1–29.
4 Curt Gentry, The Killer Mountains: A Search for the Legendary Lost Dutchman Mine (New York, 1968).
5 Sam Ro, ‘Bre-x: Inside the $6 Billion Gold Fraud that Shocked the Mining Industry,’ Business Insider (online), 3 October 2014, www.businessinsider.com.
6 Michael Robbins, ‘The Great South-eastern Bullion Robbery’, Railway Magazine, CI/649 (May 1955), pp. 315–17.
7 BBC News, ‘Brinks Mat Gold: The Unsolved Mystery’, 15 April 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk.
8 Matt Roper, ‘Fool’s Gold: The Curse of the Brink’s-Mat Gold Bullion Robbery’, Mirror, 12 May 2012, www.mirror.co.uk.
9 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2010–11 Career Guide to Industries, available at bls.gov.
10 Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca historica, trans. C. H. Oldfather (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 5.38.
11 Bill Nasson, The War for South Africa: The Anglo-Boer War, 1899–1902 (Cape Town, 2010).
12 Gary Kynoch, ‘“Your Petitioners Are in Mortal Terror”: The Violent World of Chinese Mineworkers in South Africa, 1904–1910’, Journal of South African Studies, XXXI/3 (September 2005), pp. 531–46.
13 Kevin Starr, California: A History (New York, 2005).
14 Quoted in Sucheng Chan, ‘A People of Exceptional Character: Ethnic Diversity, Nativism, and Racism in the California Gold Rush’, California History, LXXIX/2 (2000), pp. 44–85.
15 Trafzer and Hyer, eds, Exterminate Them.
16 Robert Hine and John Faragher, The American West: A New Interpretive History (New Haven, CT, 2000), p. 249.
17 David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (Stanford, CA, 1994).
18 Michael Magliari, ‘Free State Slavery: Bound Indian Labor and Slave Trafficking in California’s Sacramento Valley, 1850–1864’, Pacific Historical Review, LXXXI/2 (May 2012), pp. 155–92.
19 The Sioux never accepted U.S. ownership of the Black Hills, though, and in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court found that the U.S. government had violated the terms of the Fort Laramie Treaty and failed to pay the Sioux for the land. The bill, factoring in 100 years of interest, came to more than $100 million. The Sioux refused to accept the award and demanded the return of their land. The award remains in a Bureau of Indian Affairs account, accruing compound interest, and as of 2010 it was worth $570 million.
20 Vivian Schueler, Tobias Kuemmerle and Hilmar Schröder, ‘Impacts of Surface Gold Mining on Land Use Systems in Western Ghana’, Ambio, XL/5 (July 2011), pp. 528–39.
21 Charles Wallace Miller, The Automobile Gold Rushes and Depression Era Mining (Moscow, ID, 1998).
22 Tom Phillips, ‘Brazilian Goldminers Flock to “New Eldorado”’, The Guardian (online), 11 January 2007, www.theguardian.com.
23 United Nations Environmental Programme, ‘The Cyanide Spill at Baia Mare, Romania: Before, During, After’ (Szentendre, 2000).
24 Scott Fields, ‘Tarnishing the Earth: Gold Mining’s Dirty Secret’, Environmental Health Perspectives, CIX/10 (October 2001): A474–A481.
25 Jan Laitos, ‘The Current Status of Cyanide Regulations’, Engineering and Mining Journal, 24 February 2012, www.e-mj.com.
26 James Urquhart, ‘Sugar Solution to Toxic Gold Recovery’, Chemistry World (online), 15 May 2013, www.rsc.org.
27 Coinweek (online), ‘Goldline International Placed Under Injunction, Ordered to Change Sales Practices’, 22 February 2012, www.coinweek.com.
28 For an explanation of the theory that Brown was preventing the failure of a major bank, see Thomas Pascoe, ‘Revealed: Why Gordon Brown Sold Britain’s Gold at a Knock-down Price’, The Telegraph (online), 5 July 2012, http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk. For a defence of Brown’s sale, see Alan Beattie, ‘Britain Was Right to Sell Off Its Pile of Gold’, Financial Times (online), 4 May 2011, www.ft.com.
29 Stephanie Boyd, ‘Who’s to Blame for Peru’s Gold-mining Troubles?’, New Yorker (online), 28 October 2013, www.newyorker.com.
30 Human Rights Watch, Gold’s Costly Dividend: Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea’s Porgera Gold Mine (Human Rights Watch, 2011), available at www.hrw.org.
31 Human Rights Watch, The Curse of Gold: Democratic Republic of Congo (Human Rights Watch, 2005), available at www.hrw.org.
32 PricewaterhouseCoopers, ‘Dodd-Frank Section 1502: Conflict Minerals’, accessed 8 October 2015.
33 Boyd, ‘Who’s to Blame for Peru’s Gold-mining Troubles?’