Bronze, Sea and Sardinia: Social and Technological Evolution in an Island Society

The island of Sardinia, long considered to have been relatively isolated from developments in the prehistoric Mediterranean, is now known to have had a long history of significant interactions with neighboring cultures. By the Late Neolithic, the use of copper and silver are documented, while during the Bronze Age Sardinia was an important part of an international koine in which copper oxhide ingots, decorated ceramics, and other materials were exchanged between the eastern and western Mediterranean. The use of lead isotope analysis to determine the provenance of the ores used to make oxhide ingots has been the subject of great debate, primarily on grounds of incomplete or insufficient testing of ore sources, and because of the potential for recycling of scrap metal (see Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 8, 1995). Analyses by Nöel Gale and Zofia Stos-Gale suggest that all of the oxhide ingots found in Sardinia are derived from Cypriot ores, a conclusion which has been challenged as premature at best. Few authors, however, have considered in detail the circumstances in which oxhide ingots - from any ore source - were present in the Nuragic society of Bronze Age Sardinia.

A coherent model will be proposed here which accounts for the presence of oxhide ingots in Sardinia, and for the contacts with eastern Mediterranean cultures which they represent, as complementary to the extraction, refinement, and use of local ores. This model will be based on the archaeological evidence for Sardinian metallurgy, and the social and economic character of the Nuragic culture. Among the archaeometallurgical evidence which will be discussed are a Nuragic metal workshop where copper-based alloys were cast to form utilitarian objects and weapons, as well as votive figurines (bronzetti) (Gallin and Tykot 1993); and analyses by Tykot and others (see Balmuth & Tykot 1998) of Nuragic copper ingots and bronze artifacts.

BALMUTH, M.S. & R.H. TYKOT. 1998. Recipes for Sardinian bronzes, Journal of Roman Archaeology, supplemental series, in press.

GALLIN, L.J. & R.H. TYKOT. 1993. Bronze Age metalworking at Nuraghe Santa Barbara (Bauladu), Sardinia, Journal of Field Archaeology 20: 335-345.