62 replies to this topic

[Eagle Stone]

While reading the concerns of this forum I will create a new thread called 'Copper mining and related artifacts' which is factual with tangible evidence provided by links to artifacts that were found or documented and another thread under alternative theories which I will illustrate what we found (stone bird effigy) and what was found in Europe.

Eagle stone

[stonecarver]

The copper workings in Ireland at Mount Gabriel alone yielded 380 tons of copper - more than 100 times the copper content of ALL the bronze objects known for the period from Ireland (Pearson 1994, Bronze Age Britain). Timoothy Taylor recently calculated that for the British Isles we have recovered somewhere in the region of just 2% of all the objects made from Bronze in the Bronze Age.

Given that some of the Bronze objects are unique, it is highly likely that there are other forms that we have not yet seen in the archaeological record.

[Eagle Stone]

It was reported that during World War II that tons of ancient artifacts from Michigan were melted down for the copper during the war.

I have to dig up the article and scan it and post it.  

[ocd]

stonecarver, on 7 April 2007, 10:45, said:

The copper workings in Ireland at Mount Gabriel alone yielded 380 tons of copper - more than 100 times the copper content of ALL the bronze objects known for the period from Ireland (Pearson 1994, Bronze Age Britain). Timoothy Taylor recently calculated that for the British Isles we have recovered somewhere in the region of just 2% of all the objects made from Bronze in the Bronze Age.

Given that some of the Bronze objects are unique, it is highly likely that there are other forms that we have not yet seen in the archaeological record.

How was the copper extracted at mount gabriel - was it open cast mining or panned from rivers. I live in cornwall and have been led to believe that early man panned the tin from rivers first, then used open cast mining much later and then mining proper at a much later date again.
Lots of the tin in cornwall was mined from veins running through granite which is obviously incredibly hard, explosives were used as a part of the process.

Incedently I live near an area that was the largest copper mine in europe at the end of the 19th century, I don't know how long they'd been extracting copper from the site though.

regards
            ocd

[stonecarver]

Hi ocd,

sorry I haven't responded to your post earlier - I was in Scotland visiting some recumbent stone circles and I haven't checked my mails until I got back.

At Mount Gabriel in Ireland the copper despoits (malachite) were found in sandstone rock strata (a much easier rock to work than granite, as I'm sure you appreciate). They have found at least 32 prehistoric mine-workings there, though there were possibly more as modern ore extraction has possibly destroyed some of the evidence for prehistoric mining)

William O'Brien (a well-known archaeologist who has excavated there) says they were cutting diagonally down into the sandstone and excavating upto ten metres into the rock to extract the ore. They were setting fires in the galleries to heat the rock, then dousing the rock with cold water (cuasing it to fracture through thermal shock). Then they pecked away at the rock with antlers and hammer-stones to extract smaller pieces of the ore which they then ground smaller outside.

Granite can be fire-set the same way. The heat of the fire causes fractures in the rock and then throwing buckets of cold water at it when it's still hot increases the number and severity of the fractures, which can then be hammered and broken off. It was hard work!

Also, in Britain at least, in the Neolithic and Bronze Age people were working granite. They were even carving it into complex shapes. They were great stone-workers.

You are right about the way people were working tin in Cornwall incidentally. There is also evidence that there were much smaller quatities of tin in some river-beds in Ireland but these appear to have been worked-out very early on - Cornwall was the most important source of tin in north-western temperate Europe in later prehistory.

ocd, on 12 April 2007, 22:03, said:

stonecarver, on 7 April 2007, 10:45, said:

The copper workings in Ireland at Mount Gabriel alone yielded 380 tons of copper - more than 100 times the copper content of ALL the bronze objects known for the period from Ireland (Pearson 1994, Bronze Age Britain). Timoothy Taylor recently calculated that for the British Isles we have recovered somewhere in the region of just 2% of all the objects made from Bronze in the Bronze Age.

Given that some of the Bronze objects are unique, it is highly likely that there are other forms that we have not yet seen in the archaeological record.

How was the copper extracted at mount gabriel - was it open cast mining or panned from rivers. I live in cornwall and have been led to believe that early man panned the tin from rivers first, then used open cast mining much later and then mining proper at a much later date again.
Lots of the tin in cornwall was mined from veins running through granite which is obviously incredibly hard, explosives were used as a part of the process.

Incedently I live near an area that was the largest copper mine in europe at the end of the 19th century, I don't know how long they'd been extracting copper from the site though.

regards
            ocd

[ocd]

stonecarver

thanks for the reply - the ingeniuity and skill of ancient people never ceases to amaze me, I do alot of driving in cornwall and see alot of dry stone walling or I should say cornish hedging. Some of the granite posts and stones you can see have been chiselled or drilled out of the rock, and others haven't and seem much older and look like the remains of stone rows that have had the gaps filled in with smaller stones in the past by ancient farmers to form walls and boundaries.

Speculation on my part of course, but interesting to find out how neolithic people carved and quarried stone - I know this is a thread on metals but do you know much about carved cup or bowl marks in granite?


ocd

[stonecarver]

Hi ocd,

you're absolutely right - there are examples of prehistoric artefacts and structures ending up in dry-stone walls, from Celtic carved heads to stone axes, monument components and so on.

With regard to stone-working... yes, that's my particular area of expertise. I studied the geology of the British Isles at college and lithics (stone tools and stone-working) at university - hence my user-name here).

Prehistoric people were able to work granite by using the pecking technique - essentially this is where they used a hammerstone to peck at the rock, removing tiny amounts with every strike. A good book to start with is 'Artefacts' by Henry Hodges ISBN 0-7156-2316-8 it has good chapters on stone-working. It's a tedious business, but I think they were used to hard work.

[ocd]

stonecarver

thanks for the reply I'll add the book to my wish list!

I think patience must have been the order of the day back then. Or maybe the lack of television to waste your life away in front of had a beneficial effect on creativity!


thanks ocd

[Desmond Johnston]

stonecarver, on 24 March 2007, 19:45, said:

Hi,

Thanks for the more precise dating for Stonehenge (I was working from memory with that - and the strongest memory is weaker than the faintest ink!).    

The dates for the metalwork however were taken from books/papers.

Essentially, my point was (and remains) that  metalworking was extant in the British Isles at the time the megalithic components of Stonehenge were erected.

As far as I am aware, barbed-and tanged flint arrowheads continued in use well into the Bronze Age.

As early metalworkers were happy to use arsenical bearing copper-ores, I don't think the same people whould have been bothered about the possible dangers of using tin-ores. In any case, they soon started using tin ores in quantity despite its inherent dangers, for a very long time (the whole of the Bornze Age).

The axe carvings are exactly like a particular axe type contemporary with the sarsen monument.

Whilst some people think the carvings look like mushrooms - you might consider the ersosion the sarsens have been subject to has taken away the crispness of the original carvings... the nearest thing we have to them are actually one-piece (open) stone axe moulds.

There was an interesting paper at the TAG conference last year on this subject.

I made a couple of typos - I guess you know what Skeuomorphs and Mycenaen mean...

[Desmond Johnston]

I have come across an explanation of why stones of ancient monuments were often laboriously worked with stone tools even when metal tools were already available. Apparently in the ancient world there was a prejudice against the use of metal on stones of "spiritual" significance.

I came across this first in a French text (La Connaissance des Megalithes - Fernand Niel - Robert Lafonte 1976.) He refers to quotes from the Bible where the Israelites were instructed, in cerating a stone altar, not to use stone worked with metal. (Joshua VIII 31.)

I have since seen other references to a general prejudice against metal. This varied from one culture to another. For example the Egyptians in the Pyramid Era had no problem with copper chisels. Iron in particular seems to have been regarded with suspicion - perhaps because of its tendency to rust. The cultures in question shared a respect for stone as a natural product as opposed to man-made metals. Doesn't this ring a bell today?

Thus it would be unwise to associate the date of creating stone monuments with the ability to use metals at that time. Metal tools were precious and recycled continuously - hence their apparent scarcity in archaeological sites.

Desmond.

[stonecarver]

Different cultures had, as you say Desmond, very different views on the use of particular materials as tools at different times.

In Britain, bronze stone-working chisels were made. But also, flint is wonderful for pecking deisgns in stone. One reason why they may have reserved bronze initially for 'high-status' implements (usually weapons and decorative items) is that it was so very valuable... and at the same time, flint was perfectly suited to carving stone (and relatively common enough).

I mentioned in a previous post that Timothy Taylor has estimated we have less than 2% of all the bronze items manufactured in Britian during the Bronze Age. One reason for that is, as you say, it may have been reused by later generations. Stone monuments were being constructed in Britain some 1000 years and more before the introduction of metals and ever since. I don't recall anybody say here though, that the use of metals was used to date monuments.

Given the interest, I might post a separate thread about  prehistoric stone-working.

[Jimit]

"flint is wonderful for pecking designs in stone."
Are you sure? Flint is glassy and brittle and a paste of it may have been used to polish stone/bronze artifacts. Sarsen is the hardest stone in GB and even now,with modern tools, is seldom carved, but just roughly shaped. The working of the stones at SH was first done with sarsen mauls, progressively getting smaller, then a final finish with, probably a sarsen paste. Try getting even a mark on sarsen with a flint and you will get nothing just an eye full of splinters. Even hitting a sarsen stone with a modern sledgehammer produces little more than a small area of dust and a vibration through your body like a ringing bell.
Jim.

[stonecarver]

Hi Jimit,

Flint is indeed micaceous and exhibits conchoidal fracture (like glass, see the excellent book on flint by John Lord), but it is the material par-sexellence for pecking-stones (which are like a hammer-stone, except they have sharp edges and are used for carving).

Are you Certain sarsen is the hardest stone in the UK? I think that fresh sarsen (as opposed to sarsen which has been weathered for a few thousand years) might be softer than you might expect.

In any case, it has been demonstrated that flint pecking stones are better than high-carbon steel stone-masons chisels for cutting granite.  IF you know how to make the pecking-stone - it is Not just a simple case of picking up any old bit of flint and having a go with that. You have to make a pecking-stone from a core (much as the types used for making blades, but bigger). And hitting any rock with a sledgehammer is guaranteed to cause a shiock - that;s not how you shape stone at all...

This is going off topic so I'll start a new thread...

[stonecarver]

The development of bronze-working is traceable through the types and forms of objects found in the archaeological record. Typoloical schemes for metalwork are good for seeign the changes that occurred over time in design. By the middle Bronze Age there were many regional variants, though some types appear universally.

Daggers and rapiers developed into more elaborate types and eventually, into swords. Casting long, thin objects in bronze using the extant technology was very skillful, and the swords of the later Bronze Age were pushing the technology of the simple bowl-type furnace to its limits. Moulds were initially of stone (one then two-piece) and later they were using clay moulds to create the more complex swords such as the Carp's Tongue or Ewart Park types.

[stonecarver]

Early Bronze rapiers were sometimes cast in two-part stone moulds, but there is less evidence for this type of mould later in the Bronze Age (there are three moulds from Europe for Later Bronze Age swords),  I'm not aware of any from Britain. If you know of a stone sword mould in your local museum - let me know.