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Zofia Anna Stos-Gale is a nuclear physicist and archaeometallurgist. She is a scientific pioneer and expert in the field of archaeologically applied lead isotope analysis, a scientific method used to link archaeological objects to their mineral raw materials. In doing so, it makes an important contribution to the understanding of ancient economic and commercial networks.

Stos-Gale holds an M.Sc. in Applied Nuclear Physics from the University of Science and Technology (AGH) in Krakow, a D. Phil. from the University of Oxford (Christ Church College) and a certificate in Management from Oxford Brookes University. She is bilingual and holds Polish and British citizenship.

Career
Stos-Gale earned a master’s degree in applied nuclear physics at the AGH Scientific-Technical University of Krakow and a doctorate in archaeometry at the University of Oxford (Christ Church College). In the final years of MSc studies, she also attended courses in Art History at the Jagiellonian University of Krakow and developed an interest in the application of science in the study of ancient artifacts. Her master thesis, supervised by Tadeusz Florkowski, was based on non-destructive energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence analyses of early medieval Polish silver coins. In collaboration with Polish scientists, she also published research on the composition of Arabic dirhems, painted pottery from Bilcze zlote and pigments in incunabula from the collection of the Carmelite Monastery in Krakow. In 1974 and 1975 she participated in archaeometry symposia in Oxford and Edinburgh, where she presented her research results. For her dissertation on Application of lead isotope analysis to provenance studies in archaeology she received the doctorate in Science Applied to Archaeology at the University.

Contribution to the application of lead isotopes and chemical analysis in archaeometry
In 1977 she received a scholarship from the British Council to gain further expertise in this field in the Archaeology and Art History Research Laboratory at the University of Oxford. There she met Noël H. Gale (1931–2014), who pioneered the application of lead isotope analysis in archaeometallurgy. From 1977 to 2002, she and Gale carried out research projects at the University of Oxford to develop lead isotope analysis into a systematic method for identifying the sources of Bronze Age metals that contributed significantly to understanding Bronze Age metal trade in Europe.

Together with Gale, they founded the first mass spectrometry research laboratory in Oxford to investigate the origin of lead isotopes in archaeological and historical materials: The Oxford Isotrace Laboratory. The Lead Isotope Method for Identifying Ro