The advent and adoption of metalworking within Britain is a key area of research, given its rich variety of metalliferous resources and abundant archaeological evidence of the Beaker period and Bronze Age. As discussed, the physical archaeological nature of this evidence of metalworking is liable to be slight during excavation, and is possibly indistinguishable on a macroscopic excavation level from other forms of archaeological evidence. By considering new ideas about the location of metalworking and integrating this with new techniques, it might prove possible to construct spatial and temporal models of metalworking, allowing investigation of social as well as technological aspects of early metallurgy within Britain. As archaeologists, we need to access the 'middle ground' of early metallurgy; the location of some of the mining sites is known, and the artefactual record has abundant metal artefacts. However, the identification of metalworking areas and possibly 'production centres' (smithies) provides new directions for enquiry with which to investigate the social organisation of metallurgy and also to understand further the monumental record of these time periods.
Internet Archaeology is an open access journal based in the Department of Archaeology, University of York. Except where otherwise noted, content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC BY) Unported licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that attribution to the author(s), the title of the work, the Internet Archaeology journal and the relevant URL/DOI are given.
Terms and Conditions | Legal Statements | Privacy Policy | Cookies Policy | Citing Internet Archaeology
Internet Archaeology content is preserved for the long term with the Archaeology Data Service. Help sustain and support open access publication by donating to our Open Access Archaeology Fund.