in eastern Europe. Another was that mixing the proportions
of tin to copper was tricky. Th e ancient smiths did not have
modern scientifi c techniques for measuring and mixing cop-
per and tin in the best proportions and therefore had to use
their fi rsthand experiences working with the metals to decide
what proportions to use. In general, they created a bronze
alloy of 90 percent copper and 10 percent tin. At fi rst they
mixed copper ores with tin ores and melted the two together.
Th is left impurities in the fi nal product in the form of miner-
als that had been present in the ores. Around 1500 b.c.e. the
smiths began smelting the ores separately and then blending
the melted tin and melted copper.
People used molds to make bronze objects. Numerous
molds for axes of various sizes and shapes have been found
in eastern Europe. Th e molds usually included dowels that
resulted in holes in the fi nished product for sliding it onto a
wooden handle. Between 2000 and 1800 b.c.e. ancient Euro-
peans began making rivets, nails, and pins of gold, copper, or
bronze. Rivets could be used to screw an ax blade into place,
and pins were used to fi x clothing in place and became status
symbols.
During the Bronze Age the working of gold also came
into prominence in the parts of Europe where it was available.
Gold was generally obtained from placer deposits in streams
and hammered into sheets, which were then hammered into
ornaments and vessels. Some of the most remarkable gold
objects were made in Ireland between 1500 and 500 b.c.e.,
including bracelets, arm rings, and especially collars of sheet
gold called lunulae. Some of these gold objects are decorated
with repoussé, in which a design is made by embossing the
back of the metal sheet with a hammer or a punch.
In about 1200 b.c.e. iron smelting came to Europe from
the Near East. Iron ore was more common than tin, but it
posed special problems for the ancient smiths. Iron requires
2,797 degrees Fahrenheit to melt enough to be poured,
whereas copper requires only 1,981 degrees Fahrenheit to
liquefy. A furnace hot enough to melt iron appeared fi rst
in eastern Europe and then in southern Europe. Th is began
what is oft en called the Iron Age. By about 600 b.c.e. the use
of iron had spread throughout Europe, though bronze con-
tinued to be used in great quantities, especially for luxury
goods.
Ancient smiths usually had great lumps of iron of 55
pounds or so aft er smelting. Th ese iron lumps were almost
inevitably mixed with charcoal, which may be how the smiths
learned that mixing carbon with iron could alter the metal’s
properties. If the proportion of carbon to iron is not exactly
right, the resulting product can be too brittle or too soft. Th is
meant that iron tools and weapons were rarely as good as
bronze ones. Once the problem of smelting temperature was
solved, however, it was easier to manufacture iron objects in
larger quantities than bronze ones, because iron ore was more
common than copper or tin ore and it did not require the
careful mixing of two metals to create an alloy.
Iron was thus very cheap. European agriculture was revo-
lutionized when molten iron was poured into molds for blades
that could be fi tted on plows in the fi rst century b.c.e., allow-
ing farmers to break deeper into tougher soils than before. Th e
boom in agriculture from this resulted in a population boom
that created the mass movements of people that shaped much
of European history during the fi rst millennium c.e.
A problem found in a metal object that has been cast in
a mold, and especially in iron castings, is a brittleness caused
by the uneven alignment of metal molecules. Th is meant that
tools and weapons that looked fi ne would sometimes break
prematurely. A solution to this problem, discovered in the
Near East, was annealing—repeated heating and cooling of
metal, which results in the alignment of molecules, making
a metal object tougher. Th e smiths in Europe combined an-
nealing with another method they already used: the pound-
ing of metal to create sheets. Copper and gold lent themselves
easily to this method, and beaten sheets of those metals were
used to cover wooden sc u lpt u res or to ma ke ma sk s. Soon a ft er
1000 b.c.e. people in central Europe were pounding sheets of
bronze into new shapes, most notably for helmets and other
armor. Th is involved hammering a lump or a casting of metal
until it had a desired shape. Annealing allowed the smith to
soft en hard metal such as bronze or iron so it could be re-
peatedly beaten and shaped. Th e results were sharp edges that
could be resharpened without breaking as well as workaday
objects, such as bits for harnesses and hammers for construc-
tion work, that could endure frequent use without breaking.Gold cup of the Bronze Age (ca. 1700–1500 b.c.e.), beaten out of a
single lump of gold and found in Rillaton, Cornwall, England (© Th e
Trustees of the British Museum)
metallurgy: Europe 683