The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

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  CHAPTER 37

  EARLY METALLURGY IN WESTERN AND NORTHERN EUROPE

  BENJAMIN W. ROBERTS AND CATHERINE J. FRIEMAN

  INTRODUCTION

  THE division of European prehistory into Stone Ages and Metal Ages reflects the traditional emphasis on artefact studies and prehistoric technology in recognizing social change. The increasing detail with which we are able to visualize and analyse the past has, to some degree, supplanted this technological focus with a sociocultural one. Whilst this requires that technological developments no longer be used as proxies for social changes, in practice, archaeologists working on material culture tend to become experts in a single material and the techniques used specifically to study it. Thus, the adoption of metal objects and metallurgy is still viewed as a special and highly significant technological milestone in European prehistory, and is analysed in relative isolation to other contemporary materials and technologies. This singular perspective ensures that any explanations concerning the appearance and characteristics of early metal are, at best, partial and, at worst, based on inaccurate assumptions.

  The earliest presence of metal objects in north-west Europe during the fourth millennium BC does not herald the beginning of any material or technological transformation. At the end of the Neolithic, objects in eye-catching and exotic materials were widespread; metal—copper and gold—was adopted as part of this trend. Moreover, the processes of transmitting metallurgical knowledge were probably similar to—and perhaps occurred in concert with—other methods of teaching and learning technical information. It was clearly not regionally uniform, nor highly or centrally organized, as local styles proliferated and metal use itself went in and out of fashion in different places at different times. Early metal objects represent a consequence of the desire for exotic forms and materials, including amber beads and polished stone/flint axes, evident throughout the region at the time. The first metal objects in north-west Europe fall into three groups: sheet metal trinkets, flat axes, and atypical forms with few or no parallels. The contextual evidence is unclear for each group, though trinkets tend to come from funerary contexts whilst the other two groups occur frequently singularly or in hoards. The primary production process seemingly took place far from north-west Europe. Whilst metal became a highly significant material in this region during the second millennium BC, its incorporation into existing technological and social contexts began nearly two millennia earlier and had little immediate impact on the communities involved. Thus, the first step in understanding the spread of metal and metal technology into northern and western Europe is to understand the larger technological and material context.

  CHRONOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY OF METAL IN THE FOURTH AND THIRD MILLENNIA BC

  From the late fifth millennium BC, traces of metallurgy in north-western Europe—France, Benelux, the Low Countries, parts of the north European and Baltic regions, Britain, and Ireland (Fig. 37.1)—grow more pronounced and are more easily identified and analysed. Metal ores in this region are relatively scarce, with copper ore sources known in south-east and north-west France, western Britain, Ireland,
and the Alpine region. Gold, the other metal in circulation during the Neolithic, is similarly limited to Ireland, western and northern Britain, and southern France. Whilst lead ore is relatively widespread, its exploitation has not drawn much archaeological interest, as there is little evidence for its use outside south-east France and possibly Wales (Timberlake 2009) from the late fifth to the third millennia BC. Tin ore (cassiterite) is widely available only in south-west Britain, north-west France, and isolated locations in Ireland and southern France. Consequently, the vast majority of north-west Europe has no direct access to local ore sources; almost all known metal in these regions must have been carried in and worked at some distance to its point of origin, owing to the variety of local forms.

  FIG. 37.1. A: Study area (shaded region); B: Selected sites mentioned in the text. 1. Bygholm, Skanderborg, Denmark (Bygholm Hoard); 2. Can Tintorer, Catalonia, Spain; 3. Copa Hill, Cwmystwyth, Wales; 4. Corlea, Longford, Ireland (Corlea-6 trackway); 5. Emmeln, Niedersachsen, Germany (Emmeln-2 megalithic tomb); 6. Grime’s Graves, Norfolk, England; 7. Hüde, Niedersachsen, Germany; 8. Kideris mose, Herning, Rinkøbing, Denmark; 9. La Capitelle du Broum/Vallarade/Roque Fenestre, Languedoc, France; 10. Northton, Isle of Harris, Scotland; 11. Roquemengarde, Languedoc, France; 12. Ross Island, Cork, Ireland; 13. Spiennes, Mons, Belgium; 14. Val de Reuil, Normandy, France; 15. Vignely, Seine-et-Marne, France.

  Metal objects

  There are very few well-dated metal objects in north-west Europe and no clear pattern for the distribution of the earliest examples. Copper beads thought to comprise a necklace and dated to 3517–3357 BC were excavated in a funerary context at Vignely, Seine-et-Marne in north-central France (Mille and Bouquet 2004; Mille and Carozza 2009). Similar trinkets (small ornaments) in copper, globular lead beads, and fragments of copper awls were excavated at Roquemengarde, Languedoc, in southern France and dated to the mid-fourth to early third millennia BC (Guilaine 1991; Ambert et al. 2002). Elsewhere in southern France several typologically early metal artefacts characteristic of other regions have been excavated, including northern Italian ‘Remedello’-style daggers, western Swiss-style spiral pendants, and even a gold repoussé diadem whose closest parallels are in the Balkans, raising the possibility of earlier dates for metal objects in the region (Eluère 1982, 56; Guilaine and Eluère 1997, 176; Ambert and Carozza 1998, 160–161). North of the Alps, a number of metal objects are known from contexts typologically dated to the fourth millennium BC. Ottaway’s (1973) catalogue (primarily copper) trinkets includes crescent-, disk-, and trapeze-shaped pendants, rings, and a number of spirals or wound strips of sheet metal; but, in much of the area, traces of metal use prior to the mid-third millennium BC are sparse and occasionally quite controversial (see also Klassen 2000; Krause 2003). All known metal finds are sheet copper trinkets from funerary contexts. The finds from the Emmeln-2 megalithic tomb (Haren, Niedersachsen) are among the best known. They include four heavily weathered flat disks 4–6cm in diameter found together in a decorated bowl, a spiral 1cm in diameter made from a wound strip of sheet copper, a rolled up sheet of copper, and a small copper tube found with some amber beads (Schlicht 1968). Fourth-millennium BC copper is significantly more prevalent and better-documented in southern Scandinavia. Klassen (2000, 2004) recorded over 100 copper objects—primarily trinkets, but also flat axes and other object types—dated by context and style to the fourth millennium BC. The most famous is arguably the Bygholm hoard found near Horsens (Jutland, Denmark) and comprising three copper arm spirals, four copper flat axes, and a copper dagger blade all placed with a decorated Funnel Beaker pot into the Bygholm river (Klassen 2000, Catalogue #94) (Fig. 37.2).