The Alloy
Bronze is copper with roughly a tenth part tin. Neither metal is much use alone at this scale, and they almost never occur in the same ground — so the alloy is also a statement about distance.
4 entries · Copper, tin, proportion and hardness.
Entries in this section
Listed in reading order
A tenth part tin
Copper alone is too soft to hold an edge. Add about a tenth part tin and it casts better, hardens under the hammer and takes a working edge — but copper and tin almost never occur in the same place, so the alloy could not exist without long-distance trade. The whole period follows from that inconvenience.
Copper sources
Where it was mined, how the ore was roasted and smelted, and what the spoil says.
Tin and its scarcity
Rare, concentrated in a handful of regions, and worth moving the length of a continent.
Proportion and hardness
More tin is harder and more brittle. The ratio varies by object and by workshop.
Record and interpretation are kept apart
Every entry states what was found and what it is taken to mean as two separate things. Where the dating or the reading is contested, the entry says so rather than choosing for you.
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