Before beginning my discussion, however, it is necessary to start with some general considerations. Indeed, it was still a matter for debate as late as the s in England Rowley-Conwy , pp. Mestorf , and this continuing controversy provides a context within which to situate the reaction to proposals that a European Copper Age, between the Neolithic and Bronze Age, should also be recognised.
As John Lubbock , p. Consequently, such early references should not be seen as indicating the concept of a Copper Age pace Roberts and Freeman , p. Thirdly, although metal analysis aimed at answering archaeological questions began in the late eighteenth century e. Fourthly, bronze metallurgy was believed to have been introduced fully developed into southern Scandinavia, so that there was no transitional Copper Age to be recognised there e.
Indeed, it was generally held that metallurgy was introduced to all of Europe from the east e. It was argued that since metallurgy was introduced from the east, if there was a phase when copper rather than bronze was used, then this would be found in the area where metallurgy developed, not in Europe.
As a result of this logic, to argue in the nineteenth century for a prehistoric Copper Age was to contest the diffusion of metalworking and posit the local development of metallurgy. In their account of the burial mounds of the Mississippi valley, Ephraim Squier and Edwin Davis had noted the finding of large numbers of tools and ornaments made of copper.
These were cold-worked from native copper and likely originated from the Lake Superior area, where ancient mines were also known Squier and Davis , pp. In this publication, Morlot provided an overview of European archaeology for American readers, arranged according to the Three Age System. Morlot states that there was a copper age in America a , p. In the same year, William Wilde published the second volume of his catalogue of the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy, describing the artefacts in animal material and bronze Wilde Woodcuts of two of these copper axes are reproduced in Fig.
Indeed, he sees this evidence as perhaps indicating the independent discovery of copper metallurgy, as it did in the New World Wilson , pp. Ferdinand Keller inserted an aside on the Copper Age debate in his chapter on the finds from Lake Garda at Peschiera published in his fifth report on lake dwellings Keller , p. Lee in , and it is worth citing that translation, as the book was widely read in the English-speaking world, going into a second edition in In all the works that have come before me, treating of the development of civilisation and the introduction of metals in the western countries, it is affirmed that the use of copper necessarily must have preceded that of the mixture of this metal with tin, that is of bronze: but notwithstanding this, and even though copper tools are occasionally met with, though very rarely, yet that a copper age has never existed in Europe [p.
This assertion is partly correct with respect to Western Europe, but not for the whole of the continent, and more especially not for the east of it, such as Hungary and the countries lying east and south of it Keller , pp.
Lubbock accepted the existence of a Copper Age in North America , pp. It may be that Lubbock felt that positing a Copper Age would weaken his promotion of the Three Ages as a chronological framework, but certainly, as we have seen, it could be interpreted to mean denying the posit that bronze metallurgy was introduced from outside Europe Lubbock , p. This latter section reviews reports of caves from the whole of Spain, province by province de Prado , pp.
For de Prado, this evidence suggested a very early date for the exploitation of the mine, when copper was still too precious to use for mining tools, and so he dated it to the period of transition between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age de Prado , pp. De Prado , p. Lubbock refused to admit a Copper Age, writing,.
If the knowledge of metal had been gradually and slowly introduced by its discovery on the spot, then copper would have preceded bronze … As far, however, as Western Europe was concerned, while we had thousands of bronze implements we had but very few of copper, and none of tin Lubbock , p. It is interesting to compare the way this speech was reported in Spain and France. However, the idea that there may have been a Copper Age preceding the Bronze Age was also beginning to find support in southern France.
In the ensuing congress debate, Edouard Desor commented on copper as characterising the transitional period between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The text published in the proceedings is quite similar to that of the earlier paper Cazalis de Fondouce However, the orthodoxy in the European prehistory community was still that the use of bronze preceded that of copper, and that this was because the technology was introduced from the East and because bronze has superior properties to copper e.
Figuier , pp. In Germany too, the concept of a Bronze Age was still not universally accepted Lindenschmit ; cf. Mestorf He did not go so far as to claim that they proved the existence of a Copper Age, a question which he noted had been raised on many occasions, limiting himself to saying that probably in some countries there was a time when pure copper was used for weapons and tools, but that he doubted that it was a general rule Franks , p.
Chantre, however, felt that the evidence was too scarce and limited to just a few locations, so that he too felt it insufficient proof of a Copper Age. En quelle relation se trouvent les objets de cuivre avec les objets de bronze en Europe? What is the relation between copper and bronze artefacts in Europe? Cselfalva, was President of the meeting, and he presented a paper on the Copper Age in Hungary. This answered the critics of such an age by showing that the types of the copper artefacts were different to those of the bronze artefacts, and that some of the copper types were skeuomorphs of stone tools, while there was no continuity of form between stone and bronze artefacts von Pulszky , pp.
Unfortunately, von Pulszky had only had ten artefacts analysed and in the ensuing discussion John Evans seized on this to contest his interpretation of the data, while others intervened with observations concerning copper artefacts von Pulszky , pp. This theme was not new for von Pulszky, who had already argued for the existence of a Copper Age in Hungary in an address to the Academy of Sciences of Budapest in early reported, for example, in Spain—von Pulszky , p.
His thesis was picked up in Austria by the Conservator of the k. Juan Vilanova y Piera presented a paper arguing for the local development of metallurgy in Spain, conflating the existence of a Copper Age with local development of metallurgy Vilanova But in the debate that followed, the French prehistorians contested his conclusions.
Chantre—while not excluding a priori the existence of a Copper Age in Spain—expressed the opinion that it was not proven. His argument was the lack of analyses, but also the dominant hypothesis that the knowledge of metallurgy was introduced from the East, and Chantre stressed that even in Hungary, where the most copper artefacts had been found to date, the existence of a Copper Age was still not proven Vilanova , pp.
This work, which followed an earlier systematic study of stone artefacts Evans , was published at the time when the Three Age System had only just come to be generally accepted in England Rowley-Conwy , pp.
For Evans it was best documented in North America , pp. He then goes on to discuss in detail the classic formulation of the Three Age System Evans , pp. Clearly, this detailed restatement of the Three Age System should be seen in the context of the slow acceptance of the scheme. It is perhaps not surprising that Evans was loath to accept a Copper Age in the British Isles, and indeed its application to the British sequence has remained controversial Allen et al.
In that language it was known and specifically cited by Gaetano Chierici in the article in which he coined the Italian term Eneolitico or Eneo - litico , as he had it , that is, the Aeneolithic or Eneolithic, to date artefacts in the Remedello Fig. This latter ambiguity may have been deliberate, as scholars were at the time unsure whether the artefacts in the Remedello and Rinaldone grave assemblages that Chierici was discussing were made of copper or bronze, and his specific problem was to find a chronological collocation for them.
For Chierici, the term Eneolitico denoted a period of transition, when metal and stone artefacts were used alongside each other , pp. The paternity of the concept of a Copper Age in Italy has traditionally e.
Peroni , p. Macellari , p. As Virchow , p. The deep stratigraphy at Hissarlik some 16 m—Schliemann , p. While Evans concentrated on the relative stratigraphy of Knossos, Italian scholars were much more alive to the Copper Age e. Mosso , pp. Recently some authors have argued for the recognition of a Chalcolithic in Greek archaeology e. Much work has been done since the Second World War to refine regional chronologies, both in the light of typological studies of much improved data-sets and through the integration of radiocarbon dates.
Moreover, although the term has been widely used since the nineteenth century, there is no general agreement about what the Copper Age actually is. The conflation of the existence of a Copper Age with the local invention of metallurgy has been happily forgotten, though of course the presence of copper rather than bronze metalwork in an area means that copper metallurgy appeared before the use of its deliberate alloy tin bronze did, and where there was local invention we would expect it first to give rise to a copper metallurgy.
It should be noted that use of the term in Europe does not correspond to its original application to the North American evidence, where copper seemed to be used in the same way as stone Lubbock , p.
Logically, a Copper Age is either the period when copper metallurgy becomes more important than stone though whether this means that it is the dominant or the socially or symbolically most important technology is a further question , or the period between the introduction of copper pyrotechnology and the adoption of alloying with tin to make bronze.
It is perhaps best to pass over the fact that flint tools were also used commonly in the Bronze Age, indeed into Medieval times in some parts of Europe e. These paradoxes are perhaps best illustrated by taking the Italian usage of the term Eneolithic Eneolitico as an example. The Italian Copper Age is conventionally held to date to about — cal BC Maggi and Pearce , but copper artefacts may in fact have been in circulation from the middle of the fifth millennium cal BC and copper smelting is first attested at around cal BC Pearce , pp.
The beginning of the Copper Age is held to coincide with the appearance of the Remedello Fig. Although the end of the Copper Age and beginning of the early Bronze Age is conventionally marked by the appearance of the Polada culture and parallels with transalpine Europe Peroni , in reality tin bronze only really becomes common in the later phases of the period de Marinis , pp.
Moreover, in central and southern Italy, metalwork is not at all common until the later Bronze Age Barker , pp. It is therefore clear that Italian usage of the term Eneolitico lacks any logical consistency, but is simply the result of the national history of our discipline; indeed, it is precisely for this reason that understanding the history of the period label Copper Age helps us to understand its usage.
Indeed, although in theory such terms correspond to the dominant raw material that was used for tools and weapons in a given area, things are unfortunately not always so simple. This is well illustrated by Haskell Greenfield , p. Chalcolithic , Eneolithic and Copper Age are, of course, synonymous, but this does not solve the lack of correlation between regional and national traditions of scholarship. To adduce a further complication, in many areas tin bronze does not come into general use at the beginning of the early Bronze Age, such as for example in Italy, where the start of the period is marked by new archaeological cultures, such as Polada, rather than the onset of the new technology.
Indeed, in many areas, during what is locally called the early Bronze Age, metal still plays a subordinate role and it can be argued that the society can still be seen as Neolithic in character see e. This system worked in its original context, but there were a number of methodological and conceptual problems. These were well expressed by Gordon Childe in a perceptive address to the British Prehistoric Society, published in Childe , pp.
This means that as a relative chronology, the Three Age System works best when used in the discussion of regional developments. Peake , pp. It may, however, be debated whether these changes in technology really do correspond to significant changes in prehistoric society, that is, whether they are simply chronological divisions of convenience for the modern archaeologist or whether they reflect important developments in the past.
Various workers have produced chronological schemes based on the adoption of metallurgy. Such schemes do not necessarily imply that metallurgy was locally developed or introduced, though the absence of what are perceived to be the early stages may have a bearing on the question of whether the technology had been introduced from elsewhere, as indeed the early workers argued in the nineteenth century.
One scheme was proposed by Gordon Childe , p. Childe , p. Renfrew eschewed the Copper Age as a chronological period in his monograph, and as we have seen, preferred instead to insert a Final Neolithic between the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age of the traditional Aegean chronology Renfrew , pp. Strahm , p.
They preferred to see it as a chronological period characterised by a complex of economic, social and religious changes distinguishing it from the preceding Neolithic—changes which Lichardus argued derived from the pastoral societies of the Pontic steppe zone e.
Lichardus and Lichardus-Itten , pp. It has a bearing on the debate concerning the impact of metallurgy on society, and would tend to play down the role of metals in stimulating socio-economic change, seeing the new technology as part of a bigger complex of factors operating in Copper Age Europe. For example, in Copper Age Liguria northwest Italy , the upland pastures begin to be exploited for short-range, summer transhumance, and this new pastoral economy correlates with and may be argued to be the cause of the discovery and exploitation of other mountain resources: chert radiolarite for arrowheads, and copper ore Maggi and Pearce It is worth noting that this link between pastoralism and metallurgy had been adduced by Childe , p.
Because metallurgy was not adopted at the same time across Europe, Christian Strahm rejects the idea that the Copper Age is a chronological period, characterised by a range of socio-cultural innovations, preferring to see it simply as a phase of technological development, starting when copper is melted and local production can be assumed Strahm , p.
The Metallikum can be based on a copper, bronze or iron technology Strahm , p. However, debating whether the term Copper Age or Chalcolithic should be adopted to denote a specific phase in the British prehistoric sequence, a number of papers in a recent conference proceedings volume, Is there a British Chalcolithic?
Allen et al. Roberts and Freeman , pp. Sheridan , p. The idea that there was a Copper Age in Europe between the Neolithic and Bronze Age was inspired by the discovery of the use of native copper in prehistoric North America.
Its currency in European prehistory owes much to the observations by William Wilde that copper artefacts preceded bronze tools in Ireland, though he himself did not postulate a Copper Age per se. Acceptance of the existence of the Copper Age was a long process, because it was perceived to imply local development of metallurgy and to undermine acceptance of the Three Age System, but the and international congresses of anthropology and prehistoric archaeology were key moments in the adoption of the term.
By the mid s its validity was widely accepted. However contemporary usage of the term varies across Europe, and there can even be significant differences in its use in contiguous areas, as in the Balkans. As radiocarbon dates for the period become more widely available, and uncertainties are reduced through the application of Bayesian modelling e.
Allen, M. Is there a British Chalcolithic? People, place and polity in the later 3rd millennium. Prehistoric Society research paper 4.
Google Scholar. Bagolini, B. Il sepolcreto e gli insediamenti eneolitici di Spilamberto: S. Cesario nel quadro culturale mediopadano. Bagolini Ed. Cesario, — pp. Bologna: Cassa di Risparmio di Vignola. Barfield, L.
Chalcolithic burial in northern Italy: Problems of social interpretation. Dialoghi di Archeologia, terza serie, 4 2 , — Barker, G. The first metallurgy in Italy in the light of the metal analyses from the Pigorini Museum.
Bullettino di Paletnologia Italiana, 80, — Landscape and society: Prehistoric central Italy. London: Academic Press. Bartelheim, M. Allen, J. Sheridan Eds. People, place and polity in the later 3rd millennium pp. Early metallurgy in Iberia and the western Mediterranean.
Fowler, J. Hofmann Eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bietti Sestieri, A. Rome: Carocci. Cartailhac, E. Paris: Reinwald. Cazalis de Fondouce, P. Comte - rendu de la 4 e session, Copenhague pp. Copenhagen: Imprimerie de Thiele.
Printing The invention of printing in the 15th century increased the demand for copper because of the ease with which copper sheets could be engraved or etched for use as printing plates. A copper plate created by either of these methods will produce a finer and more delicate print than the previously used wooden blocks. Images of this kind from copper plates are separate from the text. From the late 16th century a volume with plates becomes the standard form of illustrated book.
At this time copper plates were adopted as the best means of engraving maps. The first known maps printed from copper plates are two Italian editions, dated , by the geographer Claudius Ptolemy. From , both HM Ordnance Survey and the Admiralty used copper plates for printing maps and charts.
Increasingly modern methods use chemical etching on copperplate in the pre-press process providing for less restrictive more creative designs. More information on copper plate printing. Sheathing Copper had other important uses at sea, as copper sheathing of the hulls of wooden ships was introduced in the middle of the 18th century. This was intended to protect the wood against attack by the Teredo shipworm when in warm seas.
It was found that it also kept the hulls free of barnacles and other marine growth, preventing the consequent severe drag that slowed the ships. Now, copper-nickel cladding can be applied to wood, polymer or steel hulls to allow ships to operate at higher speeds.
More information on copper sheathing in the navy. At first, Swansea obtained most of its ore from many mines in Cornwall and Anglesey.
As the industry developed and other sources were found abroad, almost all ores were imported. The smelting of the ores subsequently moved nearer the sources of supply. Copper and tin mining had begun in Cornwall in the early Bronze Age approximately BC and the copper production peaked in with , tons being produced. Tin mining continued until Neither tin nor copper are produced in Cornwall today. During the 19th century, Birmingham became the main centre for fabricating non-ferrous metals in Britain, a position that is still held.
Many major developments in the copper industry emanated from the Birmingham area. It was possible for the first time to transmit almost instant messages across continents and under oceans with widespread social and economic impacts.
The telegraph revolutionised communications which had previously relied on smoke signals, pony express, beacons, flag semaphore, heliograph mirrors and pigeon post. This invention has been compared in its impact on society to the modern day internet.
The next significant stage came with voice transmission telephone along copper cables, patented in by the Edinburgh born Alexander Graham Bell. An important historical event took place in when the first transoceanic music broadcast by telephone from Europe to the USA occurred.
In the s came the fax revolution, followed by the internet, satellite communication and increased use of optical fibre. Whilst the use of copper has been affected by the increased use of optical fibre, it is far from becoming obsolete since it is used in some form in all of these modern technologies.
Today, modern society demands that data passes between people and organisations in milliseconds. Large diameter submarine copper cables transfer signals between continents, while tiny copper wires transmit power and data to individual users. Even wireless communications require copper cabling in masts and relay stations. From the early days to modern times, copper cables and wire are the unsung heroes of the age of communication, which is a rapidly evolving industry.
Brass has been made for almost as many centuries as copper but has only in the last millenium been appreciated as an engineering alloy used to make mass produced goods and as an alloy capable of being formed by working or casting, finished by embossing, engraving and piercing and joined by soldering and brazing into exquisite objects of the finest artistic calibre.
Initially, bronze was easier to make using native copper and tin and was ideal for the manufacture of utensils. While tin was readily available for the manufacture of bronze, brass was little used except where its golden colour was required.
It was used for the production of sesterces and many Romans also liked it, especially for the production of golden coloured helmets.
Before the 18th century, zinc metal could not be made since it melts at o C and boils at about o C, below the temperature needed to reduce zinc oxide with charcoal. In the absence of native zinc, it was necessary to make brass by mixing ground smithsonite ore calamine with copper and heating the mixture in a crucible. The heat was sufficient to reduce the ore to metallic state but not melt the copper. The vapour from the zinc permeated the copper to form brass, which could then be melted to give a uniform alloy.
In Mediaeval times there was still no source of pure zinc. Brass was popular for church monuments, thin plates being let in to stone floors and inscribed to commemorate the dead. On occasions, some were recycled by being turned over and re-cut. One of the principal industrial users of brass was the woollen trade, on which prosperity depended prior to the industrial revolution.
In Shakespearean times, one company had a monopoly on the making of brass wire in England. This caused significant quantities to be smuggled in from Mainland Europe. Because of its ease of manufacture, machining and corrosion resistance, brass also became the standard alloy from which were made all accurate instruments such as clocks, watches and navigational aids.
John Harrison, a Yorkshireman and inventive genius clockmaker, solved the problem of determining longitude at sea, a problem that had baffled scientists for centuries. Over many years he constructed five sea clocks and watches, mainly in brass, which kept an accurate time of the starting port, Greenwich.
The Romans in their heyday produced nearly 17, tons of copper annually, more than would be produced again until the Industrial Revolution in Europe. With this enormous output of copper came pollution that would be unsurpassed for almost two thousand years when the Industrial Revolution began.
Did polluted air from early copper smelting affect the health of humans living in ancient times? Early smelting methods at that time were crude and inefficient by the standards of today. Copper smelting and to a lesser degree copper mining produced ultra-fine particle dust that was carried into the atmosphere on air currents created by the intense heat from smelting operations. Most of the pollution would have fallen near the smelting sites, causing health problems and contaminating soil and water.
Scientists in the s discovered that copper contamination is present in 7,year-old layers of ice in the Greenland glacial caps. A layer of ice is deposited on glacial caps annually, allowing a year-by-year analysis of the ice composition. As copper smelting became widespread at the beginning of the Bronze Age, enough copper was released into the air to contaminate ice thousands of miles away.
Peaks in copper concentrations in ice layers correspond to the era of the Roman Empire, the height of the Sung dynasty in China c. The copper pollution of the Roman days still haunts us today. One former Roman copper mine and smelting site in Wadi Faynan, Jordan is still — two thousand years after it ceased operations — a toxic wasteland littered with slag from copper smelting. Researchers have discovered that vegetation and livestock in Wadi Faynan today have high copper levels in their tissue.
Beginning in the late s, copper smelting became a major industry in Great Britain. Copper ore from Cornwall and other areas and coal deposits throughout the country fueled the smelting of copper. The copper industry drove the economy of this town. Wealthy English people often owned smelters, while local Welsh people worked as laborers in the industry. Just as in ancient Rome, copper smelting had its price.
The town and once lush countryside surrounding Swansea was stripped of vegetation by noxious copper smoke that billowed from the smelter stacks and settled on the surrounding town and fields. Topsoil on denuded hillsides succumbed to erosion. Livestock developed strange new ailments like swollen joints and rotten teeth.
Farmers blamed the smoke. The smoke also reportedly caused shortness of breath, decreased appetite, and other complaints in humans. The Cornish copper ore purified in the Swansea smelters was high in arsenic, sulfur, and fluorspar a compound of the element fluorine. The smelters emitted fumes from these compounds along with exhaust from the coal that fired the operations.
The sulfur and fluorspar from the smoke mixed with water and oxygen in the atmosphere to produce sulfurous, sulfuric and hydrofluoric acids which rained down on Swansea as acid rain.
Copper slag and other waste covered the landscape near the smelters. In , a fund was set up in Swansea, with contributions from some of the smelter owners, that would go to whomever could develop the technology to reduce the level of poisons being emitted from the smelters. The industrialists were likely more concerned with economics and aesthetics than the health of workers and local people.
Although several groups of people came up with ideas to purify the smoke, none succeeded. Eleven years later, a group of Welsh farmers from outside Swansea sued one of the major smelter owners for public nuisance, claiming that the smelter smoke was damaging their farms.
The farmers lost the suit. Copper played a central role in the technologies developed during the industrial revolution. One of the most important uses of copper at that time was in electrical engineering. Early scientists experimenting with electricity chose copper as a transmitter because it is highly conductive can transmit electrical current easily.
The electrical engineering industry today is the second largest consumer of copper. Although production methods have improved since the time of the Romans and the Industrial Revolution, today copper production makes a hefty contribution to global pollution. Butte, Montana is home of an abandoned copper mine once owned by the now defunct Anaconda Copper Mining Company, established in Butte in Until the major Butte mine operations closed in the s, the mine produced 20 billion pounds of copper.
The former mine is now the largest Superfund site in the country. The main open pit has filled with water since the termination of mining activities, forming a acre lake. Copper, lead, cadmium and arsenic contaminate the huge pit, which is recharged with water every day from an aquifer below—making the toxic lake nearly impossible to clean up. Sulfur, a mineral that is commonly a component of copper ore, reacts with air and water, producing sulfuric acid, which fills the pit. Mine runoff and fallout from the smelter once owned by Anaconda cover the landscape.
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