Baghdad battery - photo

[jdurand]

So, archaeologists say these couldn't have been used for electroplating because they've never found them wired in series with electroplated items sitting next to them.

Seems all the electroplated items were in a different museum so obviously they were never connected.

I read a fiction story a long time ago where an engineering student interned with an archaeologist. He noticed that in several places the guys were carefully brushing away odd colored dirt from around the bones. He finally got permission to cut out a section of the find, encase it whole and have it examined with a CT scan. Turns out the odd colored dirt was decomposed metals and they were in the shape of tools.

The things you can miss when you are convinced they aren't there.