The “Bronze Age” of Southern Africa: Insights from Isotopes and Trace Elements

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Southern Africa project (2015–present) uses lead and tin isotopes plus trace element concentrations to infer the geological provenance of copper and tin in Iron Age copper alloys, and to investigate the behaviors responsible for moving these objects from their geological source to the eventual site of deposition. During this research project, we discovered that the production and consumption of the alloy bronze were much more widespread than previously thought. Earlier archaeometallurgical work established the presence of bronze at large sites in southern Africa, but a recent project hinted at its presence at non-elite sites as well. Our project has built on these foundational studies and documented 34 sites, all dating after ca. 1200 cal CE, where bronze metal was recovered. These sites are distributed from northern South Africa to southern Zambia, and the tin content in these samples ranges between 1.1% and 15.5%. This presentation will summarize isotopic and chemical data from bronze samples and assess temporal and spatial patterns in alloying practice and tin source for a material that we now know was much more widely produced than previously realized.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Science and African Archaeology: Appreciating the Impact of David Killick   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36331.0