From Sicily to Salcombe: a Mediterranean Bronze Age object from British coastal waters

Abstract

Bronze Age objects found in the English Channel off Salcombe, southern Britain, include an implement which has its normal home in Sicilian agriculture -perhaps as a plough shoe. The authors assemble and classify the objects and consider the web of exchange networks that brought the artefact from Sicily to Devon via France around the thirteenth century BC.

Scales, weights and weight-regulated artefacts in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain

“…There are a few archaeological finds that suggest some exchange between southern Britain and the Mediterranean as early as the thirteenth century BC. Along with the weights, the site of Salcombe has also yielded a Sicilian strumento con immanicatura a cannone —perhaps a plough shoe (Needham & Giardino 2008; Needham et al 2013: 85–86). Such a device has hitherto only been found in thirteenth- to eighth-century BC contexts in Sicily (Giardino 1995: 17–26, 291–92).…”

Tin ingots from a probable Bronze Age shipwreck off the coast of Salcombe, Devon: Composition and microstructure

“…They recovered 31 objects including bronze objects of 22 weapons/fragments, one palstave-adze, one cauldron handle, one rectangular block/weight, one Sicilian strumento con immanicatura a cannone, three gold objects/fragments, an iron awl with a bone handle and a tin lump (Needham et al, 2013). In the absence of surviving organic material suitable for radiocarbon dating, detailed typo-chronological analyses of diagnostic bronze and gold objects, supported by radiocarbon dates from terrestrial sites containing comparable metalwork, placed the Salcombe assemblage in the Middle Bronze Age Penard metalwork phase (c. 1300-1150 BC) with the exception of one Type Nantes bronze sword which typologically dated to the Late Bronze Age Ewart Park metalwork phase (c. 1000-800 BC) (Needham and Giardino, 2008;Needham et al, 2013;Brandherm and Moskal-del Hoyo, 2014). Compositional analysis revealed that the bronzes were consistent with this dating as well as a high level of purity in the tin lump (Northover, 2013).…”

Training and Maritime Archaeology in a University Context

“…These groups often enrich archaeology, not only with the, often speculator, results that they can produce (e.g. Needham and Giardino 2008), but also with the wide skills base that they bring with them from their professional lives. With limited time to spend on archaeology, they often, not unreasonably, value training less against time spent on site.…”