Material Genealogies: Bronze Moulds and their Castings in Later Bronze Age Britain

Abstract

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Foundry in the Late Bronze Age Baiões/Santa Luzia Cultural Group: some reflections starting from a new metallic mould for unifacial palstaves

“…The use of clay or charcoal was suggested in a study of two LBA bronze moulds for casting palstaves from La Macolla, Salamanca (García -Vuelta et al 2014), while the use of clay was documented among the LBA archaeological record of the British Isles (Webley -Adams 2016). Therefore, the use of clay should constitute an alternative technique to the already known bone black coating method identified in a LBA stone FIG.…”

“…et al 2009) as well as in a Galician exemplar (Figueiredo et al 2017). A hypothesis (Baron -Miazga -Nowak 2014: 325) that a beeswax residue from a polish mould could have been used as a layer to prevent welding is improbable "…as the wax would tend to cause casting failures…" (Webley -Adams 2016). A better explanation is a dual use of the mould "…both to have cast metal (low tin content) and wax (beeswax remains), which makes it a good example of a multi -purpose tool used in various conditions…" (Baron -Miazga -Nowak 2014: 336).…”

Study of a Late Bronze Age Casting Mould and Its Black Residue by 3D Imaging, pXRF, SEM-EDS, Micro-FTIR and Micro-Raman

“…Moulds to produce a wide range of metal objects, e.g., axes, sickles, chisels, spearheads, swords, bracelets, ornaments, etc., have been found across Europe [6][7][8][9][10] since the emergence of metallurgy. Moulds for axes are the most common ones, as also evidenced in the Iberian Peninsula [11][12][13][14][15].…”

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

“…The existence of only one radiocarbon-dated and archaeometallurgically studied copper smelting site from the entire Bronze Age in Britain (c. 2200-800 BC), at Pentrwyn, near the Great Orme copper mine, north Wales, which dates to c. 1000-800 BC or the Late Bronze Age (Smith et al, 2015), would appear to support the large-scale importation of copper and/or bronze. Whilst the potentially archaeologically ephemeral nature of Bronze Age copper smelting should not be ignored (Timberlake, 2007;Williams, 2014), this current absence of primary production evidence stands in contrast to the now-extensive evidence for the secondary melting and (re-) casting of bronze, especially during the Middle-Late Bronze Age (c. 1600-800 BC) throughout southern England (Needham, 1980;Medlycott and Brown, 2013;Knight, 2014;Jones et al, 2015;Webley and Adams, 2016;Adams et al, 2017). There is also a vast quantity and range of Middle-Late Bronze Age bronze objects being deliberately deposited, with the highest concentrations in southern and eastern England, frequently far from any copper ore sources (Yates and Bradley, 2010;Roberts et al, 2013;Brandherm and Moskal-del Hoyo, 2014;Knight et al, 2015).…”