Deposits
Across Europe, bronze went into rivers, bogs and pits in quantities too large to read as accident. Much of it was broken first. What that means is the oldest argument in the subject.
4 entries · What went into the water and was never retrieved.
Entries in this section
Listed in reading order
River metalwork
Swords and spearheads recovered from rivers in numbers that cannot be accidental loss.
Bog finds
Anaerobic ground keeps organic material that survives nowhere else.
Breakage and bending
Objects deliberately destroyed before deposition — killed, in the literature.
Hoards, and what they are not
Not always hidden wealth; often the point was that it stayed there.
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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