Abstract
Bronze is the defining metal of the European Bronze Age and has been at the center of archaeological and science-based research for well over a century. Archaeometallurgical studies have largely focused on determining the geological origin of the constituent metals, copper and tin, and their movement from producer to consumer sites. More recently, the effects of recycling, both temporal and spatial, on the composition of the circulating metal stock have received much attention. Also, discussions of the value and perception of bronze, both as individual objects and as hoarded material, continue to be the focus of scholarly debate. Here, we bring together the sometimes-diverging views of several research groups on these topics in an attempt to find common ground and set out the major directions of the debate, for the benefit of future research. The paper discusses how to determine and interpret the geological provenance of new metal entering the system; the circulation of extant metal across time and space, and how this is seen in changing compositional signatures; and some economic aspects of metal production. These include the role of metal-producing communities within larger economic settings, quantifying the amount of metal present at any one time within a society, and aspects of hoarding, a distinctive European phenomenon that is less prevalent in the Middle Eastern and Asian Bronze Age societies.
Highlights
The main objectives of this article are to provide an overview of recent archaeometallurgical research in copper-based metals across Bronze Age Europe and beyond and, through project-generated examples, to show how both old and new approaches and the reinterpretation of results have major repercussions for the interpretation of early metal-using societies of the past
The bases for many of these studies are published data lists of compositional and lead isotope analyses of metal artifacts and exploited ore deposits. These data have been applied to considering individual objects, hoards, regional assemblages, and even more broadly the circulation of metals across time and space in Bronze Age Eurasia
Despite the frequent use of common datasets, a wealth of scientific expertise, and support from numerous funding agencies, there have been very strong disagreements expressed by some key protagonists as to the use, interpretation, and explanation of available data. These disagreements have been aired in a variety of media, book chapters, conference discussions, and journal papers and relate to both methods and interpretations. Such debates go well beyond minutiae of laboratory protocols and greatly matter to the broader archaeological community, both professionals and students, due to the fundamental role of metallurgy and metal objects in Bronze Age research relating to chronological frameworks, subsistence economies, craft specialization, trade and exchange, mobility, warfare, and ritual deposition and social identity (e.g., Anthony 2007; Bartelheim 2007; Broodbank 2013; Chernykh 2013; Fokkens and Harding 2013; Frachetti 2008; Harding 2000; Kohl 2007; Kristiansen and Larsson 2005; Kuzmina 2008; Pare 2000; Vandkilde et al 2015)
Summary
The main objectives of this article are to provide an overview of recent archaeometallurgical research in copper-based metals across Bronze Age Europe and beyond and, through project-generated examples, to show how both old and new approaches and the reinterpretation of results have major repercussions for the interpretation of early metal-using societies of the past. The process of interpretation for these kinds of data is a complex search for overlapping patterns on a diagram; today we build on just under 10,000 published LI datasets for samples of copper and lead/silver ores (many of which include their geochemistry and exact location in the deposit) and several thousand European Bronze Age metal artifacts This estimate is based on the data available via OXALID (Table 1) and in published articles, many of which have been cited here. They stress that specific patterns of human behavior can be inferred from meaningful variations in chemical composition of metal artifacts dictated by local (or regional) technological practices; this is where the SAM and Oxford Group meet These “localized” examples, such as local networks of exchange, re-melting, and a multiplicity of different techniques, have, for instance, been shown to take place across Early Bronze Age western Europe (Bray et al 2015). With some categories of hoards, these are intricately linked, but not so with others
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