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72-634: Arsenical bronze was produced in some areas from the 4th millennium BC onwards, prior to the introduction of tin bronze. Tin bronze foil had already been produced in southeastern Europe on a small scale in the Chalcolithic era, with examples from Pločnik in Serbia dated to c.  4650 BC , as well as 14 other artefacts from Bulgaria and Serbia dated to before 4000 BC, showing that early tin bronze developed independently in Europe 1500 years before

144-404: A bubble (although any bubbles could be forge-welded and still leave the mass of the metal ready to be work-hardened). Second, the alloy is capable of greater work-hardening than is the case with pure copper, so that it performs better when used for cutting or chopping. An increase in work-hardening capability arises with an increasing percentage of arsenic, and the bronze can be work-hardened over

216-534: A context of extreme aridification in the area in the wake of the 4.2-kiloyear climatic event , which roughly coincided with the transition from the Copper Age to the Bronze Age. Increased precipitation and recovery of the water table from about 1800 BC onward should have led to the forsaking of the motillas (which may have flooded) and the redefinition of the relation of the inhabitants of the territory with

288-425: A far-ranging trade network. This network imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus , where copper was mined and alloyed with the tin to produce bronze . Bronze objects were then exported far and wide and supported the trade. Isotopic analysis of the tin in some Mediterranean bronze objects indicates it came from as far away as Great Britain . Knowledge of navigation was well developed at this time and reached

360-679: A link to the East. It was preceded by the Yamnaya culture and succeeded by the western Corded Ware culture . The eastern Corded Ware culture ( Fatyanovo–Balanovo culture ) gave rise to the Abashevo culture , followed by the Sintashta culture , where the earliest known spoked-wheel chariots have been found, dating from c.  2000 BC . The Catacomb culture in the Pontic steppe was succeeded by

432-404: A mix of different metal sulfides, such as copper, zinc, silver, arsenic, mercury, iron and other metals. ( Sphalerite (ZnS with more or less iron), for example, is not uncommon in copper sulfide deposits, and the metal smelted would be brass, which is both harder and more durable than copper.) The metals could theoretically be separated out, but the alloys resulting were typically much stronger than

504-486: A network of palace states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as wanax . A study in the journal Antiquity from 2013 reported the discovery of a tin bronze foil from the Pločnik archaeological site dated to c.  4650 BC , as well as 14 other artefacts from Serbia and Bulgaria dated to before 4000 BC, showed that early tin bronze

576-568: A peak of skill not exceeded until a method was discovered (or perhaps rediscovered) to determine longitude around AD 1750. Around 1600 BC, the eruption of Thera destroyed the site of Akrotiri and damaged Minoan sites in eastern Crete . The further impact of this event is poorly understood. Starting in the 15th century BC, the Mycenaeans began to spread their influence throughout the Aegean and Western Anatolia. By c.  1450 BC ,

648-423: A very low percentage of their livestock, which mostly consisted of pigs and cattle. Archaeologists have discovered a unique form of bronze cheek-piece, which consists of a bronze rod with a twisted loop in the middle that threads through the nodes and connects to the bridle, halter strap, and headband. Notches and bumps on the edges of the cheek-pieces were, apparently, to attach nose and under-lip straps. Some of

720-702: A wide range of temperatures without fear of embrittlement. Its improved properties over pure copper can be seen with as little as 0.5 to 2 wt% As, giving a 10-to-30% improvement in hardness and tensile strength. Third, in the correct percentages, it can contribute a silvery sheen to the article being manufactured. There is evidence of arsenical bronze daggers from the Caucasus and other artifacts from different locations having an arsenic-rich surface layer which may well have been produced deliberately by ancient craftsmen, and Mexican bells were made of copper with sufficient arsenic to color them silver. Arsenical bronze

792-689: Is 99.7% pure copper, has led scientists to speculate that he was involved in copper smelting . Arsenical bronze has seen little use in the modern period. It appears that the closest equivalent goes by the name of arsenical copper , defined as copper with under 0.5 wt% As, below the accepted percentage in archaeological artifacts. The presence of 0.5 wt% arsenic in copper lowers the electrical conductivity to 34% of that of pure copper, and even as little as 0.05 wt% decreases it by 15%. Maykop culture The Maykop culture or Maikop culture ( Russian : майкоп , [mɐjˈkop] , scientific transliteration: Majkop, ), c. 3700 BC – 3000 BC ,

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864-692: Is a major Bronze Age archaeological culture in the western Caucasus region. It extends along the area from the Taman Peninsula at the Kerch Strait to near the modern border of Dagestan and southwards to the Kura River . The culture takes its name from a royal burial, the Maykop kurgan in the Kuban River valley. According to genetic studies on ancient DNA published in 2018,

936-457: Is also known for a relatively large number of Early Bronze Age Burials . Arsenical bronze Arsenical bronze is an alloy in which arsenic , as opposed to or in addition to tin or other constituent metals , is combined with copper to make bronze . The use of arsenic with copper, either as the secondary constituent or with another component such as tin, results in a stronger final product and better casting behavior. Copper ore

1008-749: Is characterized by cremation burials. It includes the Lusatian culture in eastern Germany and Poland (1300–500 BC) that continues into the Iron Age . The Central European Bronze Age is followed by the Iron Age Hallstatt culture (800–450 BC). The Italian Bronze Age is conditionally divided into four periods: The Early Bronze Age (2300–1700 BC), the Middle Bronze Age (1700–1350 BC), the Recent Bronze Age (1350–1150 BC),

1080-439: Is divided into the periods I–VI, according to Oscar Montelius . Period Montelius V, already belongs to the Iron Age in other regions. In Great Britain , the Bronze Age is considered to have been the period from around 2100 to 700 BC. Immigration brought new people to the islands from the continent. Recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicate that at least some of

1152-590: Is of a typical Western-Asian variety, with the dwellings packed closely together and made of mud bricks with smoke outlets. It has been suggested that the Leyla-Tepe were the founders of the Maykop culture. An expedition to Syria by the Russian Academy of Sciences revealed the similarity of the Maykop and Leyla-Tepe artifacts with those found recently while excavating the ancient city of Tel Khazneh I, from

1224-406: Is often naturally contaminated with arsenic; hence, the term "arsenical bronze" when used in archaeology is typically only applied to alloys with an arsenic content higher than 1% by weight, in order to distinguish it from potentially accidental additions of arsenic. Although arsenical bronze occurs in the archaeological record across the globe, the earliest artifacts so far known, dating from

1296-550: The 5th millennium BC , have been found on the Iranian plateau . Arsenic is present in a number of copper -containing ores (see table at right, adapted from Lechtman & Klein, 1999 ), and therefore some contamination of the copper with arsenic would be unavoidable. However, it is still not entirely clear to what extent arsenic was deliberately added to copper and to what extent its use arose simply from its presence in copper ores that were then treated by smelting to produce

1368-756: The Armenian Plateau and apparently influenced it. To the north is the Yamna culture , including the Novotitarovskaya culture (3300—2700), which it overlaps in territorial extent. It is contemporaneous with the late Uruk period in Mesopotamia . The Kuban River is navigable for much of its length and provides an easy water-passage via the Sea of Azov to the territory of the Yamna culture, along

1440-589: The Cypriots , the lost waxing technique was introduced to create several hundred bronze statuettes and other tools. The Nuragic civilization survived throughout the early Iron Age when the sanctuaries were still in use, stone statues were crafted and some Nuraghi were reused as temples. In northern Germany , Denmark , Sweden and Norway , Bronze Age cultures manufactured many distinctive and artistic artifacts. This includes lur horns, horned ceremonial helmets, sun discs, gold jewelry and some unexplained finds like

1512-544: The Don and Donets River systems. The Maykop culture was thus well-situated to exploit the trading possibilities with the central Ukraine area. Radiocarbon dates for various monuments of the Maykop culture are from 3950 - 3650 - 3610 - 2980 calBC. After the discovery of the Leyla-Tepe culture in the 1980s, some links were noted with the Maykop culture. The Leyla-Tepe culture is a culture of archaeological interest from

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1584-526: The Kurgan hypothesis of Marija Gimbutas , and it has been speculated that the Maykop culture may have contributed to the Yamnaya culture which is nowadays recognised as the ancestor of most Indo-European languages. According to a 2019 article by David Anthony, Most Yamnaya genomes studied to date exhibit admixed EHG (Eastern Hunter Gatherer) & CHG (Caucasus Hunter Gatherer) ancestry with each in robust proportions, often with CHG ancestry higher than 50%...

1656-673: The Multi-cordoned Ware culture , and the Srubnaya culture from c.  the 17th century BC . Important sites include: In Central Europe , the early Bronze Age Unetice culture (2300–1600 BC) includes numerous smaller groups like the Straubingen , Adlerberg and Hatvan cultures. Some very rich burials, such as the one located at Leubingen (today part of Sömmerda ) with grave gifts crafted from gold, point to an increase of social stratification already present in

1728-672: The Tigris and Euphrates rivers and centres of the trade networks which spread arsenical bronze across the Middle East during the Bronze Age. The Chalcolithic -period Nahal Mishmar hoard in the Judean Desert west of the Dead Sea contains a number of arsenical bronze (4–12% arsenic) and perhaps arsenical copper artifacts made using the lost-wax process , the earliest known use of this complex technique. "Carbon-14 dating of

1800-593: The bronze "gong" from Balkåkra in Sweden. Some linguists believe that an early Indo-European language was introduced to the area probably around 2000 BC, which eventually became Proto-Germanic , the last common ancestor of the Germanic languages . This would fit with the apparently unbroken evolution of the Nordic Bronze Age into the most probably ethnolinguistically Germanic Pre-Roman Iron Age . The age

1872-555: The 36th–23rd centuries BC. The culture was predominantly nomadic, with some agriculture practiced near rivers and a few hill-forts. The Catacomb culture , covering several related archaeological cultures, was first to introduce corded pottery decorations into the steppes and showed a profuse use of the polished battle ax, providing a link to the West. Parallels with the Afanasevo culture , including provoked cranial deformations, provide

1944-554: The 4th millennium BC. In 2010, nearly 200 Bronze Age sites were reported stretching over 60 miles from the Kuban River to Nalchik , at an altitude of between 4,620 feet and 7,920 feet. They were all "visibly constructed according to the same architectural plan, with an oval courtyard in the center, and connected by roads." The Maikop Culture in the northern Caucasus was concurrent with the Kura-Araxes Culture in

2016-514: The Caucasus suggests that arsenical bronze was produced for a time alongside tin bronze. At Tepe Yahya its use continued into the Iron Age for the manufacture of trinkets and decorative objects, thus demonstrating that there was not a simple succession of alloys over time, with superior new alloys replacing older ones. There are few real advantages metallurgically for the superiority of tin bronze, and early authors suggested that arsenical bronze

2088-779: The Chalcolithic era. Its population was distributed on the southern slopes of the Central Caucasus (modern Azerbaijan, Agdam District), from 4350 until 4000 B.C. Similar amphora burials in the South Caucasus are found in the Western Georgian Jar-Burial Culture . The culture has also been linked to the north Ubaid period monuments, in particular, with the settlements in the Eastern Anatolia Region. The settlement

2160-600: The Final Bronze Age (1150–950 BC). During the second millennium BC, the Nuragic civilization flourished in the island of Sardinia . It was a rather homogeneous culture, more than 7000 imposing stone tower-buildings known as Nuraghe were built by this culture all over the island, along with other types of monuments such as the megaron temples, the monumental Giants' graves and the holy well temples . Sanctuaries and larger settlements were also built starting from

2232-654: The Maikop culture (3600-3000 BC) is regarded in many scenarios as the likely source of the CHG that mixed with steppe EHG mating networks to create the Yamnaya genetic synthesis. However, more detailed studies cast doubt on this scenario. The Maykop DNA contains quite a large admixture (30%–40%) of Anatolian Farmer ancestry. Anthony continues: This mixture was too rich in Anatolian Farmer genes to have contributed much to

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2304-519: The Maykop population came from the south, from Imereti , and was descended from the Chalcolithic farmers known as Darkveti-Meshoko who first colonized the north side of the Caucasus. Maykop is therefore the "ideal archaeological candidate for the founders of the Northwest Caucasian language family ". In the south, the Maykop culture bordered the approximately contemporaneous Kura–Araxes culture (3500—2200 BC), which extends into

2376-629: The Unetice culture. All in all, cemeteries of this period are rare and of small size. The Unetice culture is followed by the middle Bronze Age (1600–1200 BC) Tumulus culture , which is characterized by inhumation burials in tumuli (barrows). In the eastern Hungarian Körös tributaries, the early Bronze Age first saw the introduction of the Makó culture , followed by the Otomani and Gyulavarsánd cultures. The late Bronze Age Urnfield culture (1300–750 BC)

2448-511: The Yamnaya gene pool, which had only 10-18% Anatolian Farmer ancestry, and most of that arguably derived from the west, from Globular Amphorae and late Tripol’ye populations... This partial description of the genetic data, if it stands, suggests that Maikop was not the source of most of the CHG that amounts to half of Yamnaya ancestry. This is because CHG was already in the steppes long before Maikop. According to J.P. Mallory, writing in 1987 before ancient DNA evidence became available: ... where

2520-594: The beginning of the New Kingdom, i.e. in the Egyptian Chalcolithic, Early and Middle Bronze Age, and within the same eras also in ancient Nubia. In the Old Kingdom , era of the largest pyramids' builders, the arsenical copper was used for the production of tools at Giza . Arsenical copper was also processed in the workshop uncovered at Giza's Heit el-Ghurab, "lost city of pyramid builders" from

2592-432: The case of axes and other tools, work-hardened by beating the working edge with a hammer, thinning out the metal and increasing its strength. Finished objects could also be engraved or decorated as appropriate. While arsenic was most likely originally mixed with copper as a result of the ores already containing it, its use probably continued for a number of reasons. First, it acts as a deoxidizer, reacting with oxygen in

2664-510: The centuries around 2000 BC when copper was alloyed with tin and used to manufacture Ballybeg type flat axes and associated metalwork. The preceding period is known as the Copper Age and is characterised by the production of flat axes , daggers , halberds and awls in copper. The period is divided into three phases: Early Bronze Age 2000–1500 BC; Middle Bronze Age 1500–1200 BC and Late Bronze Age 1200– c.  500 BC . Ireland

2736-406: The context of architectural complexes typical of southern Mesopotamian architecture. According to Boscher (2016), at Değirmentepe, arsenical copper objects were clearly manufactured around 4200 BC, yet the technological aspects of this production remain unclear. This is because the primary smelting of ore seems to have been undertaken elsewhere, perhaps already at the sites of mining. In contrast,

2808-486: The earliest wagon wheels in the world are found in Maykop culture area. The two solid wooden wheels from the kurgan of Novokorsunskaya in the Kuban region have been dated to the second half of the fourth millennium. The construction of artificial terrace complexes in the mountains is evidence of their sedentary living, high population density, and high levels of agricultural and technical skills. The terraces were built around

2880-529: The early 20th century, researchers established the existence of a local Maykop animal style in the artifacts found. This style was seen as the prototype for animal styles of later archaeological cultures: the Maykop animal style is more than a thousand years older than the Scythian , Sarmatian and Celtic animal styles. Attributed to the Maykop culture are petroglyphs which have yet to be deciphered. The Maykop people lived sedentary lives, and horses formed

2952-545: The environment, with the development of the Iberian oppida mode of settlement. The Atlantic Bronze Age is a cultural complex of the Bronze Age period of approximately 1300–700 BC that includes different cultures in Portugal , Andalusia , Galicia , France , Britain , and Ireland and is marked by economic and cultural exchange that led to the high degree of cultural similarity exhibited by coastal communities, including

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3024-721: The fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, the Linear B , offers the first written records of the Greek language and their religion already included several deities that can be also found in the Olympic Pantheon . Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of

3096-588: The first tin bronze alloys in the Near East . This bronze production lasted for c. 500 years in the Balkans but disappeared at the end of the 5th millennium, coinciding with the " collapse of large cultural complexes in north-eastern Bulgaria and Thrace in the late fifth millennium BC". Tin bronzes using cassiterite tin were subsequently reintroduced to the area some 1500 years later. The Aegean Bronze Age begins around 3200 BC when civilizations first established

3168-954: The fourth millennium BC. and all subsequent cultures used them for agricultural purposes. The vast majority of pottery found on the terraces are from the Maykop period, the rest from the Scythian and Alan period. The Maykop terraces are among the most ancient in the world, but they are little studied. The longevity of the terraces (more than 5000 years) points to a tradition of landscape engineering. Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European Based on Wang (2018), David W. Anthony (2019) notes that "the Maikop population

3240-584: The frequent use of stones as chevaux-de-frise , the establishment of cliff castles , or the domestic architecture sometimes characterized by the round houses. Commercial contacts extended from Sweden and Denmark to the Mediterranean . The period was defined by a number of distinct regional centres of metal production, unified by a regular maritime exchange of some of their products. The major centres were southern England and Ireland, north-western France, and western Iberia. The Bronze Age in Ireland commenced in

3312-415: The hills and into the fertile valleys . Large livestock ranches developed in the lowlands which appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel–Rimbury culture began to emerge in the second half of the 'Middle Bronze Age' ( c.  1400 –1100 BC) to exploit these conditions. Cornwall was a major source of tin for much of western Europe and copper

3384-413: The hot metal to form arsenous oxides which vaporize from the liquid metal. If a great deal of oxygen is dissolved in liquid copper, when the metal cools the copper oxide separates out at grain boundaries, and greatly reduces the ductility of the resulting object. However, its use can lead to a greater risk of porous castings, owing to the solution of hydrogen in the molten metal and its subsequent loss as

3456-445: The immigrants came from the area of modern Switzerland . The Beaker people displayed different behaviors from the earlier Neolithic people and cultural change was significant. The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Britain at this time. Additionally, the climate was deteriorating; where once the weather was warm and dry it became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, forcing the population away from easily defended sites in

3528-535: The larger hilltop settlements, and the elite using violence in practical and ideological terms to clamp down on the population. Ecological degradation, landscape opening, fires, pastoralism, and maybe tree cutting for mining have been suggested as reasons for the collapse. The culture of the motillas , developed an early system of groundwater supply plants (the so-called motillas ) in the upper Guadiana basin (in Iberian Peninsula's southern meseta ) in

3600-465: The late fifth millennium BC". Tin bronzes using cassiterite tin would be reintroduced to the area again some 1,500 years later. The Maykop culture was the major early Bronze Age culture in the North Caucasus . Some scholars date arsenical bronze artifacts in the region as far back as the mid-4th millennium BC. The Yamnaya culture was a late copper age /early Bronze Age culture dating to

3672-471: The late second millennium BC to host these religious structures along with other structures such ritual pools, fountains and tanks, large stone roundhouses with circular benches used for the meeting of the leaders of the chiefdoms and large public areas. Bronze tools and weapons were widespread and their quality increased thanks to the contacts between the Nuragic people and Eastern Mediterranean peoples such as

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3744-560: The legs and feet. It has been speculated that this lay behind the legend of lame smiths in many cultures and myths, such as the Greek god Hephaestus . As Hephaestus was an iron-age smith, not a bronze-age smith, the connection would be one from ancient folk memory. A well-preserved mummy of a man who lived around 3,200 BC found in the Ötztal Alps , popularly known as Ötzi , showed high levels of both copper particles and arsenic in his hair. This, along with Ötzi's copper axe blade, which

3816-461: The metal. Reconstructing a possible sequence of events in prehistory involves considering the structure of copper ore deposits, which are mostly sulfides. The surface minerals would contain some native copper and oxidized minerals, but much of the copper and other minerals would have been washed further into the ore body, forming a secondary enrichment zone. This includes many minerals such as tennantite , with their arsenic, copper and iron . Thus,

3888-508: The metals individually. The use of arsenical bronze spread along trade routes into northwestern China, to the Gansu – Qinghai region, with the Siba , Qijia and Tianshanbeilu cultures . However it is still unclear as to whether arsenical bronze artifacts were imported or made locally, although the latter is suspected as being more likely due to possible local exploitation of mineral resources. On

3960-639: The most important finds were done in Isleham (more than 6500 pieces). Preceded by the Chalcolithic sites of Los Millares , the Argaric culture flourished in southeastern Iberia in from 2200 BC to 1550 BC, when depopulation of the area ensued along with disappearing of copper–bronze–arsenic metallurgy. The most accepted model for El Argar has been that of an early state society, most particularly in terms of class division, exploitation, and coercion, with agricultural production, maybe also human labour, controlled by

4032-746: The other hand, the artifacts show typological connections to the Eurasian steppe. The Eneolithic period in Northern Italy , with the Remedello and Rinaldone cultures in 2800 to 2200 BC, saw the use of arsenical bronze. Indeed, it seems that arsenical bronze was the most common alloy in use in the Mediterranean basin at this time. In South America , arsenical bronze was the predominant alloy in Ecuador and north and central Peru, because of

4104-516: The palace of Knossos was ruled by a Mycenaean elite who formed a hybrid Minoan-Mycenaean culture. Mycenaeans also colonized several other Aegean islands, reaching as far as Rhodes . Thus the Mycenaeans became the dominant power of the region, marking the beginning of the Mycenaean 'Koine' era (from Greek : Κοινή , common), a highly uniform culture that spread in mainland Greece and the Aegean. The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in

4176-471: The precise amount of arsenic being added was much harder to gauge due to the manufacturing process. Arsenic is an element with a vaporization point of 615 °C, such that arsenical oxide will be lost from the melt before or during casting, and fumes from fire setting for mining and ore processing have long been known to attack the nervous system, eyes, lungs, and skin. Chronic arsenic poisoning leads to peripheral neuropathy , which can cause weakness in

4248-471: The reed mat in which the objects were wrapped suggests that it dates to at least 3500 B.C. It was in this period that the use of copper became widespread throughout the Levant, attesting to considerable technological developments that parallel major social advances in the region." In ancient Egypt , use of arsenical bronze/copper is confirmed since the second phase of Naqada culture, and then used widely until

4320-491: The reign of Menkaure. Egyptian and Nubian objects made of arsenical copper were identified in the collections in Brussels , and in Leipzig . In the Middle Kingdom, use of tin bronze is increasing in ancient Egypt and Nubia. One of the largest studies of such material was the research of the Egyptian and Nubian axe blades in the British Museum , and it provided comparable results. Similar situation can be observed in Middle Bronze Age Kerma . Sulfide deposits frequently are

4392-403: The related Norşuntepe site provides a better context of production, and demonstrates that some form of arsenic alloying was indeed taking place by the 4th millennium BC. Since the slag identified at Norşuntepe contains no arsenic, this means that arsenic in some form was added separately. Societies using arsenical bronze include the Akkadians , those of Ur , and the Amorites , all based around

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4464-581: The rich arsenic bearing ores present there. By contrast, the south and central Andes, southern Peru, Bolivia and parts of Argentina, were rich in the tin ore cassiterite and thus did not use arsenical bronze. The Sican Culture of northwestern coastal Peru is famous for its use of arsenical bronze during the period 900 to 1350 AD. Arsenical bronze co-existed with tin bronze in the Andes, probably due to its greater ductility which meant it could be easily hammered into thin sheets which were valued in local society. The archaeological record in Egypt , Peru and

4536-416: The south of the Caucasus and the Uruk period in Mesopotamia. The finds in the Maikop kurgan (tumulus) and other kurgans of the Maikop Culture are still regarded as unique to this day. More than 7000 objects of gold and some 1000 of silver are known. Nowhere else in the Early Bronze Age world of the second half of the 4th millennium BC has such a large number of exquisite gold and silver items come to light. In

4608-406: The spread of Indo-European languages. Wang (2018) further found that 'Steppe Maykop' (a population related to the Maykop culture) probably had a minor East Asian-related component, which was estimated at ~6.9% of their ancestry, relating them to Ancient North Eurasians (Upper Palaeolithic Siberians AG3 , MA1 ) and Native Americans. Its burial practices resemble the burial practices described in

4680-453: The surface deposits would have been used first; with some work, deeper sulfidic ores would have been uncovered and worked, and it would have been discovered that the material from this level had better properties. Using these various ores, there are four possible methods that may have been used to produce arsenical bronze alloys. These are: Greater sophistication of metal workers is suggested by Thornton et al. They suggest that iron arsenide

4752-403: Was added deliberately and how much came about by accident. These matters were clarified considerably by 2016. The two relevant ancient sites in eastern Turkey ( Malatya Province ) are Norşuntepe and Değirmentepe , where arsenical bronze production was taking place before 4000 BC. Hearths or natural draft furnaces, slag, ore, and pigment had been recovered throughout these sites. This was in

4824-423: Was deliberately produced as part of the copper-smelting process, to be traded and used to make arsenical bronze elsewhere by addition to molten copper. Artifacts made of arsenical bronze cover the complete spectrum of metal objects, from axes to ornaments. The method of manufacture involved heating the metal in crucibles, and casting it into moulds made of stone or clay. After solidifying, it would be polished or, in

4896-433: Was descended from the Eneolithic farmers [that] came from the south, probably from western Georgia [the Darkveti-Meshoko culture], and are the ideal archaeological candidate for the founders of the Northwest Caucasian language family." He also notes that the Bronze Age Maykop individuals tested by Wang (2018) could not have contributed to the Yamnaya gene pool, Yamnaya being the archeological culture most likely connected to

4968-701: Was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in northern Wales . Social groups appear to have been tribal but with growing complexity and hierarchies becoming apparent. Also, the burial of dead (which until this period had usually been communal) became more individual. For example, whereas in the Neolithic a large chambered cairn or long barrow was used to house the dead, the 'Early Bronze Age' saw people buried in individual barrows (also commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as Tumuli), or sometimes in cists covered with cairns . The greatest quantities of bronze objects found in England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire , where

5040-442: Was more common than previously thought and developed independently in Europe 1,500 years before the first tin bronze alloys in the Near East . The production of complex tin bronzes lasted for c. 500 years in the Balkans. The authors reported that evidence for the production of such complex bronzes disappears at the end of the 5th millennium coinciding with the "collapse of large cultural complexes in north-eastern Bulgaria and Thrace in

5112-419: Was phased out due to its health effects. It is more likely that it was phased out in general use because alloying with tin gave castings which had similar strength to arsenical bronze but did not require further work-hardening to achieve useful strength. It is also probable that more certain results could be achieved with the use of tin, because it could be added directly to the copper in specific amounts, whereas

5184-512: Was used by many societies and cultures across the globe. Firstly, the Iranian plateau , followed by the adjacent Mesopotamian area, together covering modern Iran, Iraq and Syria, has the earliest arsenical bronze metallurgy in the world, as previously mentioned. It was in use from the 4th millennium BC through to mid 2nd millennium BC , a period of nearly 2,000 years. There was a great deal of variation in arsenic content of artifacts throughout this period, making it impossible to say exactly how much

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