From circulation to hoarding: New insights into the cycle of metals in the Atlantic Late Bronze Age

Rock art and metal: Late Bronze Age contact between Scandinavia and the Iberian Peninsula

Goteborg. Suecia
Workshop. 2017

Research on the Atlantic Late Bronze Age hoards has traditionally come up against two major problems. One the one hand, the majority of studies adopt a geographically very restricted focus that makes it difficult to identify both their regional singularities and their general patterns. On the other hand, they have tended to assess each aspect of the phenomenon (typology, metal composition, geographic location?) while paying little attention to how they relate to each other.

Our research strategy aims to examine the nature and extent of interaction between the Late Bronze Age communities of the European Atlantic façade (c. 1300-850 BC) through the comparative study of metal hoards in selected geographical areas. To achieve this aim, we prioritise a standardised data acquisition protocol in four focus areas on the Atlantic façade. From the analytical point of view, we aim to build a new corpus of chemical composition and lead isotope analysis of LBA metal objects from the selected study areas and extended through the compilation of previous analytical data.

In our presentation we will focus on the lead isotopic results generated in the framework of our research projects, which include c. 50 archaeological samples from Galicia and Portugal (Atlantic Iberia). These new results, alongside other archaeological and analytical information, provide new insights into the circulation and hoarding of metals in the Atlantic Late Bronze Age.

Atlantic Late Bronze Age. Metal hoards. Archaeometallurgy. Lead isotope analysis.