Metallogeny of gold deposits

The metallogeny of various gold deposits, particularly their broad temporal and spatial relations, and their relations to other metallic ores, is significant to genetic understanding and also useful in exploration. Archean gold deposits co-exist, both regionally and locally, with certain iron formations, massive base metal and nickel sulfide ores, but these occur generally in differing parts of the host stratigraphic sequences. Gold deposits in marine-eugeosynclinal environments are most important and numerous in Archean rocks. They become increasingly rare in successively younger strata where epithermal deposits in subaerial-continental rocks become important. The hydrothermal systems that formed both were apparently similar; one active in submarine tectonic settings, the other in sub-volcanic continental ones. Gold was apparently first introduced extensively into supracrustal rocks by sub-sea floor hydrothermal processes in Archean time, forming gold-enriched exhalites. These were reworked by metamorphic processes forming epithermal veins in many lode districts, and by sedimentary processes in the Witwatersrand. Epithermal gold deposits were generated where these older, auriferous basement source rocks were affected by younger, plutonic-volcanic-hydrothermal activity.