New insights in Bronze Age metal producing societies

The control over resources, production and distribution of demanded goods is in general considered as one of the driving forces for the interaction of ancient communities. One crucial commodity is bronze, a metal eponymous for a complete chronological period - the Bronze Age. This project targets to explore the overall role of metallurgy in the social development (settlements, burials) in the Balkans (Eastern Serbia) and, related to that, of the exchange relations with adjacent and more distant societies in Europe. In order to do so, we will investigate specific metal producing Bronze Age societies in region under study. Additionally, the nearby region of Central Bosnia will function as a comparative example with similar resources and landscape, yet with apparently diverse social organization in terms of settlement pattern and burial rites. By using a large series of archaeometric analyses of ores, slags, ingots and metal objects, the results of the project will contribute to reconstructing the different steps of production as well as to revealing the distribution patterns of copper produced in the study area. This multidisciplinary and cross-border study will create an extensive database in which the remains of prehistoric (but also possible e.g. roman or medieval) metallurgical activities are documented. As an additional step, the results of already conducted field studies (airborne laser scanning, geophysical prospections) will be used in order to locate new settlements or cemeteries, smelting and mining places. The fieldwork will also provide a number of contextualized organic samples for radiocarbon analysis, which close the research gap caused by the insufficient absolute dates for the Bronze Age in the area. Moreover, the analysis of the zoological and botanical remains will help to understand subsistence strategies, food production and natural environment of the metal producing sites. The results of the project will elucidate the role of the Bronze Age societies from the western and central Balkans within the local and the supra-regional metal exchange networks between Central Europe (Urnfield culture) and the Mediterranean. It will also help to exanimate which of the local ore sources were used in the Bronze Age and which distribution pattern can be reconstructed by archaeological and analytical means. As a case study this project will substantially increase our knowledge about Middle to Late Bronze Age communities in Southeast Europe and provide new insights into the trajectories of human-environmental interactions.

The control over natural resources and their distribution is generally considered one of the driving forces behind societal developments and interactions between human groups. The importance of metals in describing these phenomena is evident in the fact that entire time periods, such as the Bronze Age, are named after the dominant metal of the era. In our project, we investigated various Bronze Age societies in the Balkans that were involved in both the production and trade of copper and bronze. Through archaeological evaluations and a wide range of interdisciplinary methods (chemical trace element analyses, isotopic studies, radiocarbon dating), we succeeded in reconstructing copper exchange networks. First, we were able to definitively prove that Bronze Age societies in eastern Serbia produced copper between 2000 and 1600 BC. In addition to settlements with traces of copper processing (slag), we also examined the associated burial sites of these copper-producing communities. These sites consist exclusively of urn cemeteries with a specific burial form (circular stone constructions). Our analyses showed that all age groups were buried in the same way, mostly without grave goods. This suggests that these were communal burial sites, indicative of a relatively unstratified society. Despite the production of valuable raw materials, there are no signs of wealth accumulation in either the settlements or the cemeteries. While earlier research had dated these eastern Serbian copper producers and their graves much later (1400-1100 BC), our numerous radiocarbon data demonstrate that they are, in fact, significantly older (2000-1600 BC). We also demonstrated that local copper production ceased in eastern Serbia around 1600 BC, even though the deposits were far from depleted (copper is still mined and produced in the region today). Through the analysis of hundreds of Bronze Age artifacts (swords, axes, sickles, knives, needles, bracelets, etc.) from the entire Balkan region, we were able to prove that from 1600 BC onward, the entire region was supplied with copper from the Alpine region (northern Italy, Austria). The result of our analyses (isotopic comparisons between finished objects and deposits to identify the copper used in production) was surprising and initially unexpected, as it was previously assumed that copper production in the ore-rich regions of the Balkans (eastern Serbia, Bosnia) was local. Therefore, it is highly likely that the numerous foundry workshops in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, and North Macedonia primarily processed copper from the Alpine region, especially from Trentino, and alloyed it with tin to produce valuable bronze. With our follow-up project (FWF PAT 4481823), we aim to investigate how, through which routes, and for how long copper from production centers in northern Italy and Austria was integrated into Balkan supply networks.