Gold in basalt of the Deccan plateau

Sheet-forming basalt, dolerites and gabbro-dolerites of hypabyssal (subvolcanic) intrusions on cratons are the most common representatives of continental intraplate magmatism. The authors report on this paper the first data on the background gold content of such cratonic plateau basalt. It should be noticed that special and general publications on the geochemistry of plateaus basalt carry absolutely no information on its gold content, and that available data on the background gold content in cratonic mafic rocks in general deal only with their intrusive facies.