A major study has traced the roots of a long-standing mystery in ancient history: where did Bronze Age societies like the Mycenaeans in the eastern Mediterranean acquire the Cornish tin needed to make bronze?
Around 1300 B.C., civilizations across the region began using bronze more widely for weapons, tools, and jewelry. While these cultures had already used small amounts of the metal.
Bronze is made by mixing copper and tin. Copper was easy to find in the ancient world, but tin was not. There were no large deposits near the eastern Mediterranean, raising what experts call the “tin problem.” Archaeologists have debated for decades where this rare metal came from.
A team led by British researchers believes it now has the answer. Through chemical testing of ancient tin artifacts and ore samples from across Europe, scientists found strong evidence that tin from Cornwall and Devon in southwest Britain reached the Mediterranean more than 3,000 years ago.
Discovery points to Britain’s earliest known export
Dr. Benjamin Roberts, an archaeology professor at Durham University, called the discovery a breakthrough. “This is the first commodity to be exported across the entire continent in British history,” he said. He added that the scale of the tin trade was far greater than previously thought, and forces a new understanding of Bronze Age Britain’s role in international exchange.
The study is the first large-scale project of its kind. Researchers tested tin ingots recovered from Bronze Age shipwrecks, including three that sank near the coast of Israel. They also examined ore samples and ancient tin objects from southwest Britain and a few other European regions.
By comparing these materials, the team found that Cornish tin moved through a vast trade network. According to Roberts, the metal traveled through rivers in France, across Sardinia, past Mediterranean islands near Cyprus, and finally to the Levant.
Their findings appear in the latest issue of Antiquity, a peer-reviewed archaeology journal.
Greek explorer Pytheas described a trade now confirmed by archaeology
Cornwall and Devon contain some of the world’s richest and most accessible tin deposits. Although later mined extensively, many scholars had doubted that Bronze Age communities, made up of small farming groups without towns or writing, could have engaged in such long-distance trade with advanced Mediterranean societies.
The study also offers the first direct evidence supporting ancient accounts by Pytheas, a Greek explorer who traveled around Britain around 320 B.C. He wrote the earliest detailed description of the island and its people.
Pytheas described tin being traded from a tidal island in southwest Britain, which he called Ictis. From there, traders reportedly carried the metal across the sea and down French rivers, reaching the mouth of the Rhône in just 30 days.
Alan Williams, an honorary fellow of archaeology at Durham University, said other tin sources existed but were limited. “We believe it [Cornish tin] was the richest, the most easily accessible and the main source,” he said.
Williams first became interested in the topic 50 years ago, while working as a student geologist at one of Cornwall’s last active tin mines.
He will soon join Roberts at a new excavation site on St Michael’s Mount, which may have been a Bronze Age center for tin smelting and a key link in the ancient trade network.
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