Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
Recent research carried out by Project Ancient Tin, an initiative led by Benjamin Roberts and R Alan Williams from the University of Durham (published in Antiquity: https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2025.41), has found that a large proportion of sampled tin ingots on Mediterranean shipwrecks from the Bronze Age/early Iron Age were mined from ores in south-west Britain. These new findings strengthen the idea that Cornwall and Devon were an important part of the supply chain for bronze-production.
Bronze is a composite metal made of copper alloyed with tin. But tin is not a plentiful resource, being much scarcer than copper. To produce the amount of bronze in circulation in Europe at this time would have required a stable supply chain. There are only four major tin deposits in all of Europe: Cornwall and Devon; Erzgebirge on the German–Czech border; Iberia and Brittany; and the Massif Central in France. There are also large deposits in central Asia and minor deposits elsewhere. Whether European or Asian sources helped drive the Bronze Age in Europe and the Mediterraean has been a point of debate up until now.
The first clue as to the location of tin-production comes from the spread of bronze technology, a phenomenon that has been dubbed ‘bronzization’. In Europe, the first bronze items appeared in Britain c.2200-2100 BC. It than slowly spread east, with central Europe and Scandinavia adopting bronze around 1800 BC, and then south, with it reaching southern Iberia, the Aegean, and Egypt around 1500-1300 BC. The direction of this expansion suggests that populations in Britain may have played a key role in the spread of the technology.
Project Ancient Tin recently carried out a large-scale analysis of both tin ores and artefacts from the period. Using ICP-MS (Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry), the team developed a programme that analysed trace elements, tin isotopes, and lead isotopes within each sample. They were then able to compare the signature of each tin-ore region with the signature found in tin ingots. They found that tin from Cornwall and Devon had higher levels of indium compared to other ore sites in Europe, excepting that from Erzgebirge. To distinguish between tin from south-west Britain and Erzgebirge, they had to assess geological age.
The results showed that tin ingots from four Bronze Age/early Iron Age Mediterranean shipwrecks – Rochelongue, off the south coast of France, and three off the coast of Israel: Hishuley Carmel, Kfar Samir South, and near Haifa – were almost certainly mined from ores in south-west Britain. Additionally, most tin ingots from the Uluburun shipwreck (c.1300 BC) off the coast of Turkey had results consistent with having originated in the British south-west. The lead isotopes, however, were inconsistent, due to the contamination from Anatolian lead sources and perhaps indicating that these ingots may have been remelted with tin from other locations.
These results paint a picture of tin from south-west Britain being integral to a vast European network of bronze trading and, in particular, that the ‘bronzization’ of the Mediterranean was driven by European tin sources rather than central Asian ones.
Text: Rebecca Preedy / Photo: R Alan Williams, Antiquity Publications Ltd
