Nourishing a structured world with living metal in Bronze Age Europe

Abstract

For over a thousand years, European peoples intently deposited bronze artefacts into the earth. This essay examines the motivation for doing so from a cosmological perspective. It argues that depositions were believed to support universal life processes and assure availability of resources for people and polities by literally “feeding“ universal creative energies. It is suggested that metallic ores were considered living materials that grew within the earth in locales usually at some distance from a given society and that they were embued with generative force that would be returned to the earth when metal was deposited within it. The vital life force was tangibly evidenced by metallurgical processes and uses and especially by the blue-green patina that copper and copper alloys acquire when the metal is exposed to moist conditions.