Mediterranean, Bronze Age

Seven years ago we started the first systematic research program on the application of the lead isotope techniques to provenance studies in archaeology. Particular stress was placed on the sources of metals in the Mediterranean Bronze Age. For the first 2 years we worked mostly on the sources of lead and silver in Bronze Age Greece, Cyprus, and Egypt (32-36). In 1982, we pioneered the application of the lead isotope method for prove-nancing copper-based artifacts (15, 37-38). 

The question of the remelt effect is still stressed by archaeologists who have not presented any properly discussed archaeological evidence that it was a common phenomenon in the East Mediterranean Bronze Age. 

Lead isotopes were the first (radiogenic) isotopes to be used to investigate ancient materials. Lead isotopic analysis has been extensively used in archeometry to trace the provenance of lead, silver, and bronze metal (mainly from the Mediterranean Bronze Age period) since the 1960s [23, 30—47]. Recently, the provenancing of ancient iron has also been attempted via Pb isotopic analysis [34, 48, 49]. These... 

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. 

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. 

Knapp, A.B. (1991). Spice, drugs, grain and grog organic goods in Bronze Age East Mediterranean trade. In Bronze Age Trade in the Mediterranean, ed. Gale, N.H., Paul Astrom s Forlag, Jonsered, pp. 21-68. 

The most intense NAA study of archaeological ceramics has been focused on the Bronze Age Mycenaean and Minoan pottery of Greece and Crete, and related areas around the eastern Mediterranean (Mommsen et al. 2002). This work began in Berkeley, California, in the 1960s with the work of Perlman and Asaro (1969), who went on to analyze 878 shards of pottery. The results were never fully published according to Asaro and Perlman (1973, 213), the question of provenience of the vast quantities of Mycenaean wares has... 

Gale, N. H. and Stos-Gale, Z. A. (1982). Bronze Age copper sources in the Mediterranean a new approach. Science 216 11-19. 

I write these words at the end of my Mediterranean quest that I described in the Preface. Fm at the topmost point of the medieval village of Eze in France, overlooking the French Riviera. The scent of jasmine fills the air, and the carmine colors of bougainvillea flood my eyes. I touch the remains of the stone walls around me that date back to the Bronze Age. 

In order to reconstruct human diet from bone tissue, direct isotopic analysis of animal and plant remains from the same archaeological context is the most reliable way to detect isotopic shifts involving the whole ecosystem due to environmental variation. Since this is often impossible for the lack of these control samples, we have explored the use of 8I80 to assess the environmentally induced variation in 8I3C and 8ISN values from collagen and apatite, and assess the dietary information they represent. This can be done assuming a scarce nutritional role of marine resources and the absence of C4 crops, as seems to be the case in the western Mediterranean and specifically in the Sardinian Neolithic and Bronze Age. 

Tin and lead have been known since ancient times. Cassiterite, Sn02, was mined in Britain and transported by sea to the Mediterranean area where copper was available. After reducing the Sn02 with charcoal to produce tin, the tin was alloyed with copper to make bronze as early as about 2500 BC. Consequently, tools and weapons made of bronze figured prominently in the period known as the Bronze Age (about 2500 to 1500 BC). At an early time, lead was found as native lead or as galena, PbS, that could be converted to the oxide by roasting the sulfide in air followed by reduction with carbon. As a result, tin and lead are among the elements known for many centuries. Of course, the reason that the metals Sn, Cu, Au,... 

A promising approach to this problem has been the use of lead isotope ratios to characterize sources. Chapter 9 by Gale and Stos-Gale is an example of this type of study. The isotopic ratios of lead are variable because some of the isotopes are the daughters from the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium (4), Even though the amount of lead in bronze artifacts is small, Gale has been able to distinguish between sources of the ore on the basis of the ratios of the various lead isotopes. The sources of silver, lead, and copper in the Bronze Age Mediterranean are discussed. 

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