Northern Europe

Abstract

Copper objects first circulated in Britain and Ireland around 2500 BC, thus beginning a short-lived Chalcolithic that ended with the rapid adoption of tin-bronze metallurgy after 2100 BC. Both islands have numerous sources of copper; however, these orebodies are not evenly distributed, nor were they all accessible to the prehistoric miner. This is part of the explanation why certain regions developed a strong tradition of copper mining that lasted well into the Bronze Age. Ireland has long been regarded as a significant producer of metal in the Bronze Age. This reflects the large quantities of Bronze Age metalwork found in a part of Europe with abundant sources of copper. The south-west region of Cork and Kerry was the main centre for early copper production. This began with mining at Ross Island in Killarney, where Beaker culture groups produced arsenical copper during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age (c.2400–1900 BC). Farther south, there are seven copper mines now dated to the Early to Middle Bronze Age (c.1800–1400 BC) in the peninsulas of west Cork. These are known as Mount Gabriel-type mines, the name coming from the single largest concentration of such workings located on the eastern slopes of this mountain in the Mizen Peninsula (O’Brien 1994, 2003). The recent discovery of trench workings at Derrycarhoon continues the story of Bronze Age copper mining in that area to 1300–1100 BC, after which this activity seems to have ceased (O’Brien 2013). The study of these mines began during the late eighteenth/ early nineteenth centuries, when mineral prospecting led to the discovery of primitive workings at several locations in south-west Ireland. Described as ‘Dane’s Workings’ in the antiquarian literature, these mines were associated with the use of firesetting and stone hammers (see quotations from Griffith 1828 and Thomas 1850 (in O’Brien 2003) in Chapter 1). The first systematic research began in the 1930s with the discovery of the Mount Gabriel group by the geologist, Tom Duffy. These were subsequently mapped by another geologist, John Jackson, who brought these mines to wider attention when he obtained a Bronze Age date for charcoal taken from mine spoil on the mountain (Jackson 1968).