Linking metal production and environmental archives in the Atlantic Late Bronze Age

29th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA2023)

Belfast. Reino Unido
Congreso. 2023

The production and circulation of metals have traditionally been an essential element in the analysis of the social processes of recent Prehistory. In recent years, notable advances have been made in fields such as mining archaeology, isotopic geochemistry or the inventory and archaeometric characterization of metal artifacts and other material evidence linked to their production. These approaches contribute to clarify the chronology and scale of metallurgical production and reconstruct metal circulation networks, obtaining a more refined perspective on the role of metallurgy in prehistoric communities.

In this contribution we explore the possibilities of combining these approaches with other proxies that are less common in such integrated perspectives: the hoarding of metals and the palaeopollution linked to mining-metallurgical activities.

The hoarding of metals was a widespread phenomenon in later prehistoric Europe and particularly intense in the Atlantic façade of the continent. The nature and scale of this phenomenon varies depending on chronology and geographic area, but the suitability of hoards for periodisation and quantification offers an opportunity to link the cycles of metal hoarding to the palaeoenvironmental records of atmospheric pollution caused by mining and metallurgical activities. While palaeopollution studies using peats and other environmental archives are making a substantial contribution to our understanding of the chronology and intensity of ancient mining and metallurgical activities, their connection to the hoarding cycles has never before been explored. In line with a similar study carried out recently for the Roman period (Silva-Sánchez and Armada 2023), this paper offers a critical review of research on prehistoric metal pollution in the Atlantic European Prehistory, exploring to what extent it is possible to combine and refine this information with that offered by mining archaeology, isotopic characterization of mineralizations and the study of metal hoards.

Palaeopollution. Metal hoards. Atlantic Europe. Lead isotopes analysis.