Asinan
Ignacio Montero Ruiz (relator)
Duncan Hook (relator)
Neil Wilkin (relator)
Resumo
High-leaded bronze is an alloy frequently used for the production of double-looped palstaves in northwestern Iberia. These artefacts were usually recovered from hoards containing between two and more than a hundred axes. The interpretation of these hoards is still an open debate, and new insights could be gained from a better understanding of the provenance of lead that usually occurs in such high levels.Aiming to draw a general picture of this issue, in this paper we present new lead isotope analysis (MC-ICP-MS) of some palstaves from the British Museum collection together with an assessment of some other published data. Local galena must be discarded as a real option to produce lead. Taking into account both the options to obtain these high-leaded alloys as well as which element decrease with the addition of lead in a traditional bronze alloy, we suggest that both copper-lead ingots and galena ores from different regions of south-eastern Iberia arrived to the Northwest, where they were subsequently alloyed with local tin to produce this particular type of axes in the Atlantic region.