Bronze Age

ELECTRON PROBE MICRO ANALYSIS OF THE METALLIC WARE OF THE BRONZE AGE... 

Period of culture Early Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age Plastics... 

Estimates of the earliest use of copper vary, but 5000 BC is not unreasonable. By about 3500 BC it was being obtained in the Middle East by charcoal reduction of its ores, and by 3000 BC the advantages of adding tin in order to produce the harder bronze was appreciated in India, Mesopotamia and Greece. This established the Bronze Age , and copper has continued to be one of man s most important metals. 

As humans entered the Bronze Age, charcoal was the only material that could simultaneously heat and reduce metallic ores. Later, the addition of an air blower made it possible to achieve temperatures high enough to soften or melt iron. During the Industrial Revolution, charcoal was largely displaced in most ironworks by coke derived from coal. However in Brazil, which lacks adequate coking coal resources, most of the charcoal produced is still used to reduce iron ore. 

FIGURE 1 Copper is easily extracted from its ores and was one of the first metals worked. The Bronze Age followed the discovery that adding some tin to copper made the metal harder and stronger. These four bronze swords date from 1250 to 850 hce, the Late Bronze Age, and are from a collection in the Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria. From bottom to top, they are a short sword, an antenna-type sword, a tongue-shaped sword, and a Liptau-type sword. 

Materials and their development are fundamental to society. Major historical periods of society are ascribed to materials (e.g.. Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Steel Age, Polymer Age, Silicon Age, and SUica Age). However, scientists will open the next societal frontiers not by understanding a particular material, but by optimizing the relative contributions afforded by a combination of different materials. 

Metallurgy is the production and purification of metals from naturally occurring deposits called ores. It has an ancient histoiy and may represent the earliest useful application of chemistry. Metallurgical advances have had profound influences on the course of human civilization, so much so that historians speak of the Bronze Age (ca. 

These properties, coupled with its relatively low cost, make copper one of the most useful metals in modem society. About half of all copper produced is for electrical wiring, and the metal is also widely used for plumbing pipes. Copper is used to make several important alloys, the most important of which are bronze and brass. Both alloys contain copper mixed with lesser amounts of tin and zinc in various proportions. In bronze, the amount of tin exceeds that of zinc, whereas the opposite is tme for brass. The discovery of bronze sometime around 3000 bc launched the advance of civilization known today as the Bronze Age. Because bronze is harder and stronger than other metals known in antiquity, it became a mainstay of the civilizations of India and the Mediterranean, used for tools, cookware, weapons, coins, and objects of art. Today the principal use of bronze is for bearings, fittings, and machine parts. 

Frank et (2002) demonstrate that the tunnels must have been built during the Bronze Age (Troy I-n) by Anatolian and south-eastern European cultures. 

Its alloy with copper provided the material for the Bronze Age. Alchemists associated tin with the planet Jupiter. 

It seems that making arsenical copper was characteristic of a transitional stage of technological development, the alloy apparently first replacing pure copper and then eventually being supplanted by bronze. It is possible that during the early Bronze Age it was realized that the use of arsenic-rich copper ores, or the incorporation of arsenic ores into copper ores smelting... 

Cherry, J. F. and A. B. Knapp (1991), Quantitative provenance studies and Bronze Age trade in the Mediterranean Some preliminary reflections, in Gale, N. H. (ed.), Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology, Astroms, Jonsered, Vol. 40, pp. 92-111. 

Merkel, J. F. (1990), Experimental reconstruction of Bronze Age copper smelting based on archaeological evidence from Timna, in Rothenberg, B. (ed.), The Ancient Metallurgy of Copper, International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences, London, pp. 78-122. 

Renfrew, C. (1967), Cycladic metallurgy and the Aegean early Bronze Age, Am. ]. Archaeol. 71,1-20. 

Shortland, A. (2006). Application of lead isotope analysis to a wide range of late bronze age Egyptian materials, Archaeometry 48, 657-669. 

Shortland, A., N. Rogers, and K. Eremin (2007), Trace element discriminants between Egyptian and Mesopotamian late Bronze Age glasses, ]. Archaeol. Sci. 34, 823-829. 

Tylecote, R. F. and R. F. McKarrel (1978), The Working of Copper-Arsenic Alloys in the Early Bronze Age, Arnold, London. 

One can replace the oxygen atoms by other atoms, for example, by silicon itself. This leads to pure silicon, which cannot be neglected in the field of microelectronics. The significance of very pure grade silicon is so important for the entire electronic industry, especially for computers, etc. that we could say we are living in a "Silicon Age" in comparison to the "Ceramic Age or the "Bronze Age" of the past. 

The Iron Age was a phase of human civilization (in Europe from about 1000 BC to 100 AD), characterized by the introduction and development of iron tools and weapons it followed the Bronze Age. 

Civilisation Bronze Age Use of copper, first city states in Mesopotamia Beginnings of trade Transfer of plants, animals and disease about the Eurasian world... 

Figure 3.12 Mass spectrum of the organic material sampled from a ceramic sherd from the Bronze Age site of La Fangade (France). The spectrum was obtained by means of Dl MS. Reproduced from Anal. Chem., Regert and Rolando, 74, 5, 965 975, Copyright 2002, with permission from American Chemical Society...

B. Stem, C. Heron, L. Corr, M. Serpico and J. Bourriau, Compositional variations in aged and heated pistacia resin found in late Bronze Age Canaanite amphorae and howls from Amama, Egypt, Archaeometry, 45, 457 469 (2003). 

Copley, M. S, Berstan, R., Dudd, S. N., Straker, V., Payne, S. and Evershed, R. P. (2005b) Dairying in antiquity. II. Evidence from absorbed lipid residues dating to the British Bronze Age. Journal of Archaeological Science 32, 505 521. 

The ability to geographically identify the source area of natural gems plays an important role in determining if these stones may have originated from a politically unstable area. Garnet is a semiprecious silicate mineral of variable composition that has been used as a gemstone since the Bronze Age. 

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