Campo del Cielo - Hierro, IAB-MG - Recorte pulido y grabado - 6.32g - Argentina

This 1,891.5g complete individual of Campo del Cielo is a large, heavy iron with a strongly sculpted surface. One face is dominated by deep, rounded thumbprint-like hollows, while the others show ridges, sharp edges and a mix of dark brown patina and brighter metal on the high points. Held in the hand, it gives a real sense of the weight and density of meteoritic iron.

Campo del Cielo is an iron meteorite from northern Argentina, classified as an Iron, IAB-MG (Main Group). Its iron-nickel metal formed around 4.5 billion years ago, but its arrival on Earth was comparatively recent. Radiocarbon dating of charred wood found beneath fragments places the fall at roughly 4,200 to 4,700 years ago, when a large body broke apart in the atmosphere and produced a field of at least 26 craters spread along a strip about 18.5km long.

The iron was known to the Indigenous peoples of the region long before Europeans arrived. They called the site Piguem Nonralta, a name the Spanish rendered as Campo del Cielo, the Field of the Sky. A Spanish military expedition went in search of the iron in 1576, and further finds were recorded in 1774, 1783 and 1803. In all, around 100 tonnes of fragments have been recovered, more than from any other meteorite, including the 28.8 tonne El Chaco mass and the 30.8 tonne Gancedo mass unearthed in 2016.

Complete individuals show the surface the iron acquired during its fall and its long burial: rounded thumbprint-like hollows, sharp edges where the body broke apart, and a dark brown patina from thousands of years in the Chaco soil. For collectors, Campo del Cielo offers an accessible way to own a substantial, naturally shaped iron meteorite whose story reaches back more than four thousand years, and into the written record of the sixteenth century.