The use of experimental archaeology/archaeometallurgy for the understanding and reconstruction of Early Bronze Age mining and smelting technologies

Abstract

Some 20 years of archaeological investigation have now firmly established the evidence for prehistoric copper mining in Britain; this includes some 12 sites worked for copper sulfide minerals (chalcopyrite) and carbonate ores, most of these between 2100 and 1600 BC. With few artifacts or work areas surviving, interpreting the technology of primitive mining presents a challenge to the archaeologist. Experimental work has been particularly useful here, making it possible to understand the process of fire-setting and the use and hafting of stone implements and to predict the discovery of organic remains such as antler tools within the excavations on Copa Hill (Cwmystwyth, Wales). In the absence of archaeological evidence, experiments in smelting tin (cassiterite) and copper (malachite and chalcopyrite) ores are now helping to reconstruct some of the most rudimentary types of furnaces. A recent attempt to smelt chalcopyrite within an open furnace pit at Butser Iron Age Farm appears to show the process of copper prill formation taking place at temperatures of less than 1200°C under poor reducing conditions--tantalizing evidence, perhaps, of how copper may have been extracted from a problematical sulfide ore at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age.