Was the development of bronze alloying technology really a straight line?

Previously, it was assumed that bronze alloying technology evolved linearly, and that the newest bronze alloying techniques progressively replaced the oldest ones throughout time. This review, however, demonstrates that this is not the case and that several bronze alloying techniques were used contemporaneously in the same production contexts in different areas of the world.

Montes-Landa, Timberlake and Martinón-Torres, with the help of members of the Materials Section of the Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Science Laboratory, ran a series of field-based experiments, hosted at Cambridge Archaeological Unit, recreating each of these techniques. The researchers found that the different techniques were able to produce an object of broadly similar quality, and that each method offered different advantages in other important aspects of production. These advantages included benefits such as saving raw materials and time.

These results support that each technique (or a combination of several ones) can be advantageous under different contextual conditions, which would explain the absence of a linear substitution trend. This new data is fundamental in debunking the previously assumed linear narrative of the development of bronze alloying technology, which the team hopes will steer current debates on bronze production organisation and trade.

Julia Montes-Landa, Simon Timberlake and Marcos Martinón-Torres are researchers at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. Their paper ‘Debunking deterministic narratives of technological development through experimentation: a critical review of the prehistory of tin bronze alloying’ is published today in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.