Where Bronze Age civilizations got large amounts of tin, a scarce metal, to mix with copper into the era’s namesake gold-colored metal has long puzzled archaeologists.
A big part of the answer lies in Cornwall and Devon, two counties in southwestern England, a new study concludes. Farming communities began mining large tin ore deposits there around 4,200 years ago, say archaeometallurgist Alan Williams of Durham University in England and his colleagues.
That metallic harvest spread through trade routes, supplying societies in northern and central Europe around 3,800 years ago and Eastern Mediterranean societies about 3,400 years ago, the scientists report May 6 in Antiquity. Archaeologists date the Bronze Age