Paper short abstract:

The paper adopts a network perspective on Early Bronze Age ‘metal-work’ in Central Italy, starting from the coincidence of copper mining, production and hoarding in southern Tuscany. It discusses the role of metallurgists in social networks, including exchange, often elusive in object biographies.

Paper long abstract:

Compared with stages of production, (re)use and deposition in object biographies, exchange remains a 'black box'. Nonetheless, it is regarded as crucial in our understanding of European Bronze Age metallurgy. Exchange defines the position of craftspeople in social networks, perhaps even more than their craft or the qualities of their products themselves. In a Latourian sense, Bronze Age metallurgists are only one actor/actant in a 'metal-work' that stretches the full length of object biographies (and back). A network perspective addresses the tendency towards narrative linearity in archaeological applications of the concept of object biographies. Another problem of the latter is their aspatial and ahistorical character, to the detriment of understanding the actual (not conceptual) position of craftspeople in social networks, in particular with respect to the elusive stage of exchange.

This paper substantiates the emergence of an Early Bronze Age 'metal-work' in Central Italy, focused on southern Tuscany where copper mining, bronze production and hoarding spatially coincided. It brings spatial, contextual and composition analyses of ingots and finished pieces of metalwork together in a diachronic account of Copper through Middle Bronze Age networks. This leaves us with an unusually clear impression of exchange networks in Central Italy that bridges the gap in object biographies between production and (re)use and/or deposition. A network approach to metallurgy as a 'metal-work' creates the opportunity to explore the position of craftspeople in social networks and their role in exchange, as well as its intersections with Early Bronze Age cosmology and sociality.