- The Technology of Metalwork -
been flourishing British mines were abandoned when they were. It is, of course,
possible that the decline was caused by the British market being invaded by the
potential surplus of metal brought into Gaul by the Romans and then increased by
the occupation.
LOCATION
Apart from the mines there is very little tangible evidence of bronze age metallurgical
sites and processes until the beginning of the Late Bronze Age in the eleventh-tenth
centuries Be. From that period until the end of the eighth century a considerable
number of metalworking sites has been excavated, yielding crucibles, moulds and
casting waste (Howard 1983). There is quite clearly an association of bronze-
working with late bronze age occupation of hill-fort sites, for example at the
Breiddin, Powys, Wales (Musson 1991); this is typical in producing ceramic piece
moulds for weapons, crucible fragments, metalworking tools, notably a hammer, and
metal waste. In areas without hill-forts, from south Devon to Yorkshire, other types
of settlement have produced the same evidence, generally with ceramic moulds. The
use of this technology demanded some degree of permanence for the workshop as
the various stages such as pattern-making and the forming and drying of the moulds
all took time and space and were not particularly portable. Even so, the episodes of
bronze casting at sites like the Breiddin often seem to have occupied a very short
space of time.
Ceramic moulds were impermanent and could only be used for a single cast each;
the mass-production of axes that developed in the later Bronze Age was dependent
on permanent moulds of stone and bronze. Hoards with up to eleven axes from
the same mould survive from this basic bronze-founding (Stanton 1984) but no
associated production sites are known. This need not be a surprise because extensive
facilities for mould preparation are not needed and, with one mould able to cast as
many as fifty objects, accumulations of discarded moulds will not be common. The
major constraints on the axe-maker would have been his ability to make or acquire
new moulds and the availability of a fuel supply. Technology has thus ordered a
separation of tasks between different types of bronzeworking sites and the evidence
they leave behind. As society became more hierarchical these different levels of site
could have responded to different levels in society.
During the transition to a fully developed Iron Age we have very few traces of
metalworking, but as the intensity of metallurgical activity picked up again during
the La Tene period there is again an association of particular types of metalworking
with particular types of site. For what a metalworking site might have looked like in
the Hallstatt period we must look at two sites in France: Choisy-au-Bac, Aisne
(Blanchet 1984), and Bragny-sur-Saone, Saone-et-Loire (Flouest 1991). Both these
sites are on terraces close to the confluence of important rivers, the Aisne and the
Oise for the former, the Saone, the Doubs and the Dheune for the latter. Both sites
are clearly connected with the working of both bronze and iron and Bragny provides
evidence for a variety of processes: ceramic cire perdu and stone bivalve moulds, tools
for the shaping and decoration of bronze sheet, and tin and lead for soldering and