THE COMING OF THE AGE OF IRON
(WERTIME AND MUHLY 1980)
The close of the Bronze Age marked the end of an era in which the alloying of copper and
tin dominated trade and technology. The Bronze Age was succeeded by the Age of Iron,
already known in the West but not familiar universally. While iron artefacts from Elba
and metals from Campigliese and Monte Amiata had not escaped the attention of Bronze
Age Nuragic Sardinians, there are no definitive traces of the systematic use of iron before
the Iron Age. With the introduction of this new material, the Nuragic civilization ended
without internal and external traumas and, as far as archaeological evidence can show,
without war or slaughter. On the contrary, the descendants of the Nuragic people in the
Final Bronze Age (FBA 2 and 3) must have opened the way to the search for and actively
participated in the utilization of new resources, markets and trade partnerships.
The people of northern, central and southern Sardinia (Fig. 11.1) were exceptionally
skilled in the complex techniques of mineral exploitation and metallurgy, expert in the
Figure ii.i Map of Sardinia with the principal sites cited in the text.0 50 kmc h a p t e r i i : The N u r a g i c heritage in Etruria