Archaeologists solve ancient mystery: “on what bronze age miners and merchants were able to achieve”

The Bronze Age began some 5,300 years ago with the first transition from copper to bronze taking place in the civilizations of the Fertile Crescent from where it spread outward. While bronze can be made using copper melted together with either arsenic or tin, the latter was preferred as both the alloying process and metal casting were easier, not to mention it is a more golden-colored metal.

However, one thing has puzzled researchers over the years, where did these ancient civilizations source their tin? While the major bronze societies of antiquity had easy access to copper, tin was much harder to come by, with the only major deposits far away in western and central Europe and central Asia.

A group of archaeologists believe that they have cracked the mystery of the ‘tin problem’, publishing their findings in Antiquity. After analyzing artefacts and ore from across Europe they were able to trace the tin used back to Cornwall and Devon in southwest Britain.

These deposits are one of the largest in the world and were easily accessible for bronze age miners, found in alluvial deposits present in “virtually every valley that drained tin veins” present in and around the main granite outcrops. Additionally, they are of a higher grade than other deposits.

Findings “radically transforms” knowledge of the trade network in the bronze age world

The British-led group of archaeologists explain in their study that between 2200 and 2100 BC “a remarkable change occurred” in bronze production when Britain became the first region to completely switch over to tin-bronze. The full adoption of ‘bronzization’, abandoning the alloy with arsenic, spread across Europe eventually occurring in the eastern Mediterranean around 1500 and 1300 BC.

Ingots of tin recovered from shipwrecks off the coast of Israel during that period “are fully consistent with tin ores from Cornwall and Devon,” states the study. While there is no evidence for a direct connection between where the tin was sourced and found in the second millennium BC, the study cites other research that there was a network of smaller riverine and maritime trade routes that could have been use to move the tin.

Even the discovery of Cornish tin ingots on other shipwrecks, like one in the south of France, and markings on the ingots themselves provide evidence of a Pan-European trade in tin around 1500-1300 BC say the researchers. This in turn “was facilitated by the emergence of wide-ranging merchants, weight systems and markets,” which traded in an assortment of other goods.

“The volume, consistence and frequency of the estimated scale in the tin trade is far larger than has been imagined and requires an entirely new perspective on what bronze age miners and merchants were able to achieve,” Dr Benjamin Roberts, an associate professor of archaeology at Durham University, told The Guardian.

He said that having identified this extensive trade network it “radically transforms” the understanding of Britain’s place in the wider world during the Bronze Age.

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