  It is commonly assumed that high-energy gamma-rays are made via either purely
electromagnetic processes or the hadronic process of pion production, followed
by decay. We investigate astrophysical contexts where a third process (A*) may
dominate, namely the photo-disintegration of highly boosted nuclei followed by
daughter de-excitation. Starbust regions such as Cygnus OB2 appear to be
promising sites for TeV gamma-ray emission via this mechanism. A unique feature
of the A* process is a sharp energy minimum ~ 10 TeV/(T/eV) for gamma-ray
emission from a thermal region of temperature T. We also check that a diffuse
gamma-ray component resulting from the interaction of a possible extreme-energy
cosmic-ray nuclei with background radiation is well below the observed EGRET
data. The A* mechanism described herein offers an important contribution to
gamma-ray astronomy in the era of intense observational activity.
