- The Bronze Age has been defined through the manufacture and use of non-ferrous metal objects, right from the time when Thomsen first defined it as a distinct phase of prehistory. Debate is still ongoing as to precisely what role metals and metalworking played in Bronze Age society. It is likely, however, that the manufacture, circulation and exchange of bronze played an important role not only in Bronze Age economy and industry, but in establishing and maintaining social relations, too. This role would not have remained consistent over either space or time. Instead, different regional patterns suggest different approaches and attitudes to the manufacture, use and deposition of metal objects.
- The use of the word ‘Chalcolithic’ is a case in point. The term is used to denote the short period extending roughly between 2500 BC and 2200 BC. This is when copper objects first came into use, but before tin was alloyed with copper to create a much harder metal: bronze. The copper used to manufacture the small range of objects occurring – knives, flat axes and awls – was sourced from Ross Island, Ireland, and the objects manufactured from it typically found their way into single graves and hoards. Some larger objects were also produced at this time, in particular a group of bladed weapons or display items called ‘halberds.’ These are thought to have been mounted on vertical shafts and carried aloft as display items. They occur in limited numbers across the region, though often their accompanying contextual information is sparse.
- Sheet gold work is also characteristic of the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age. Small pieces made from or embellished with gold are often found in Chalcolithic graves, including ear or hair ornaments, buttons and stone wristguards. Large sheet gold crescentic collars known as lunalae are also occasionally found, decorated with similar motifs to those seen on Beaker pottery and often recovered from wet places. In South West Scotland, the number of all these finds is very small. This had led some to argue that how these metal objects were used continues the long-distance exchange of exotic prestige goods which characterised the Neolithic, rather than indicating a radical transformation in society (Roberts and Freeman 2012).
- Throughout much of the Early Bronze Age, copper was sourced either from the Ross Island mines in Ireland or from Wales. The ‘Type Butterwick’ bronze knife recovered from the Lockerbie Academy burial, for example, appears to have been manufactured using copper sourced from Wales (Sheridan and Northover, 2011). This contrasts with later copper alloys of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, which have a more uniform signature, indicating that they are cast from recycled metal. The distinction is so marked that Stuart Needham has suggested that in the Early Bronze Age, there may have been a strict embargo (or a ‘taboo’) on the reuse of these objects as source material for a new generation of items (Needham 2004).
- Two early metalwork hoards have been recorded from South West Scotland: the hoard of flat axes and ornaments from Maidens and the lost hoard of Tonderghie. Both hoards may have marked important locations where the flow of Irish metal was controlled and redirected elsewhere throughout Scotland. This is the scenario put forward by Stuart Needham in his examination of the Migdale-Marnoch metalworking tradition of northeast Scotland (Needham 2004). At this time, there is no evidence that the working of metal took place in the region, with finished objects instead being circulated. An absence of evidence for metalworking sites makes it impossible to say how long this situation continued: Louise Turner has suggested that the concentration of late Early Bronze Age metalwork finds along the course of the Maich Water coincides with an area of copper-rich rocks which were later worked in modern times (Turner unpublished). These have not yet been investigated for evidence of Bronze Age activity. Nor has the potential for prehistoric exploitation of copper-bearing rocks located more widely across Ayrshire and Galloway been addressed in anything more than a passing mention in the literature.
- At some point, the working of bronze became more widespread through the re-use of decommissioned bronze objects. This allowed new items to be created locally, from material which was straightforward to acquire, rather than from raw materials which had to be sourced in specific, potentially distant, places. This may explain why – in many theoretical frameworks – bronze and bronzeworking was viewed as an industrial and economic activity embedded within the domestic sphere, rather than the ritual.
- Until the 1960s and 1970s, the dominant model which explained the circulation of bronze was embodied by the concept of the ‘itinerant smith.’ Bronzeworkers were detached from a specific social group. They travelled from one settlement to another hawking their wares, exchanging brand new objects for worn-out ones and creating hoards as a by-product of their activities. Hoards dominated by one kind of object were interpreted as the stock-in-trade of a bronze merchant; hoards of broken metal objects were hidden caches deposited by metalworkers.
- Finds of single mould valves have been recovered from South West Scotland, including part of a mould for a very unusual form of Middle Bronze Age axe-chisel from Little Glengyre (Mann 1923a) and a Late Bronze Age socketed axe mould from Ardrossan (Coles 1959, 37). In neither case were these objects found in association with metalworking debris; indeed, both were recovered as single finds entirely devoid of any contextual material. So while it is entirely possible that the presence of the moulds is an indication that bronze artefacts were being manufactured locally, it is also possible that the moulds themselves were subject to circulation and exchange, just as the finished objects were.
- The link between the presence of bronze hoards and the itinerant smith has long been questioned, but the concept of bronze as economic capital remains an important theme within Bronze Age studies. The mass-dumping of hoards in southern England towards the end of the Bronze Age has been interpreted as evidence for a collapsing market, explained in cold, brutal terms of supply and demand in a world where the manufacture of iron is gaining ground. Iron has been viewed as superior to bronze in many aspects. Smelting iron requires a much higher temperature in the furnace, but the finished metal is much harder and – crucially – its ore is easier to acquire locally.
- The mass-dumping of bronze hoards, which is so characteristic of southern England, does not occur in South West Scotland. Only one hoard fits the criteria of the so-called ‘founder’s hoard’ which includes fragmented objects: the Late Bronze Age hoard from Dalduff, an interpretation questioned by researchers such as Knight (Knight 2022) and Turner (Turner unpublished). The fact that the Dalduff hoard is unique in the area implies that bronze may still have been considered a rare and valuable material, worthy of offering up in the ritual sphere. This does not, however, mean that the region must have been in some way ‘impoverished’ in comparison to others. A Late Bronze Age community in South West Scotland had sufficient wealth at their disposal to place five or six sheet bronze shields in an area of moss at Lugtonridge. These items used a considerable quantity of metal and displayed considerable skill in their creation, something borne out by the last surviving large circular shield with its concentric rows of raised ridges and bosses.
- More recent approaches view bronze objects as possessing value in terms of the social capital they convey. It has been argued by Bradley and others that the acquisition, circulation and discarding of bronze objects was a means of obtaining social prestige. This was acquired either through competitive gift-giving between social groups or communities, or through bestowing gifts to gods or ancestors. Viewing bronze in this way means that hoards and even single finds – even potentially, finds of mould debris and metalworking by-products – cannot be viewed as mere commodities. Instead, their role is potentially more complex. How this might manifest itself in South West Scotland remains unexplored: here, single finds are dominated by axeheads, a pattern which continues throughout the Bronze Age, although spearheads become more frequent finds from the Middle Bronze Age onwards. All of the recognised categories of hoard (as used by Vere Gordon Chile and others) are present in the region: ‘personal’, ‘tradesmens’, ‘founders’ and so on. They occur. However, in very small numbers. With hoards being recognised and recovered by interested antiquarians from as far back as the late 1700s, we cannot say that this pattern is wholly down to a failure in identifying and reporting such finds.
- Changes in the composition of Bronze Age alloys over time have allowed the period to be subdivided into three on the basis of the levels of technological achievement. We have already touched upon the Chalcolithic or ‘Copper Age’: here, copper was used in its pure form, with objects cast in a one-piece mould. The introduction of tin into the molten copper to create a bronze alloy marked the start of the Early Bronze Age proper, with open moulds continuing in use until the late Early Bronze Age (co-eval with the Gavel Moss hoard). It was at this time that the earliest two-piece and even three-piece moulds were used, with a clay core added into the mould to create a hollow-sectioned socket. The three-piece moulds were used to create an early form of socketed spearhead. The Middle Bronze Age makes consistent use of two-piece moulds to create a range of flanged axeheads, palstaves, rapiers and dirks, with three-piece moulds largely used to manufacture looped spearheads. In South West Scotland, this phase is best represented by the Eschonchan Fell and Drumcoltran hoards.
- The transition to the Late Bronze Age was originally marked by typological distinctions, but with the work of Brown and Blin-Stoyle (Brown and Blin-Stoyle 1959), it was recognised that a better benchmark was the addition of lead into the copper-tin alloy. This phase also marked the first appearance of sheet-bronze working, in the form of cauldrons (such as the fragmentary items from the Dalduff hoard) and shields (like that recovered from Lugtonridge). It is now acknowledged that iron was being worked before the start of the Iron Age, as we assign it, but evidence for this dating back into the Late Bronze Age remains sparse. This is in part because iron objects, with a few notable exceptions such as the iron sword included in the Llyn Fawr hoard, were not included within Bronze Age metalwork hoards.
- Bronze dominates the picture as far as Bronze Age economy and industry are concerned, but metalworking formed only one strand in a much more complex picture. There is an important tradition of pottery manufacture in the Bronze Age. In technical terms, this arguably reached its peak in the fine Beaker vessels of the Chalcolithic that occur in small numbers throughout the region. Much more widely represented are a variety of Urns (including Collared, Cordoned and Encrusted types) and Food Vessels. All of these are thick-walled and often poorly fired, which means that they may not survive well into the present. These forms appear to have been manufactured specifically for use in the grave; one example, recovered during excavations at the White Cairn of Bargrennan, may even have been placed on the pyre unfired, with firing taking place as the body was burned (Cummings and Fowler 2007).
- There are Bronze Age domestic wares, but these tend to be very plain and undiagnostic, and they occur sporadically and in small quantities. This makes them difficult to categorise and has even led to the suggestion that Bronze Age domestic sites were largely aceramic.
- Meat may have been cooked instead using skin or leather bags. These could be placed in stone troughs filled with water heated using hot stones. This practice could have generated the burnt mound sites that have been recorded in substantial numbers in the region, particularly, though not exclusively, in upland areas. Examples of these monuments have been excavated in the East Rhins of Galloway, at Dervaird, Cruise and Stair Lodge, and during developer-led excavations at Chapeldonan, Girvan, Gallowhill, Girvan and Hallmeadow, Annan.
- A recent important find of Late Bronze Age domestic pottery in association with a burnt mound at Blairhall Burn does, however, question the aceramic scenario as does a small pottery assemblage recovered from Ross Bay, Kirkcudbright. Though such finds are few and far between, it is interesting to observe that this particularly undiagnostic form of pottery is similar to that found in association with the equally unusual Late Bronze Age cremation burials.
- Worked stone also continues to be used in the Bronze Age. During the Chalcolithic, stone was still worked to create high quality items. The barbed-and-tanged arrowheads produced at this time are exemplary examples of what can be achieved with the pressure-flaking of flint. The polished stone wristguards placed in Chalcolithic graves, thought to form part of a set of archery equipment – often combine several materials, including stone, copper and even gold. A wristguard included in the single burial excavated at Lockerbie Academy may have been manufactured from stone sourced from the Lake District, emphasising once again the long-distance links that were in place from the early Neolithic onwards. In the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, the use of flaked stone tools continues, though these are invariably of poorer quality in terms of both execution and raw material than their Neolithic counterparts. The use of coarse stone also continues, both for the manufacture of domestic items, in particular saddle querns, but also for objects of much higher status: the battle-axes and axe-hammers of the Early Bronze Age. These are often beautifully executed, sometimes using stone derived from outwith the region, and they attest to a lingering ability to work with stone, well into the period when metal supposedly played a dominant role in material culture.
- Unlike bronze objects, the potential for worked stone artefacts to be placed deliberately in the ground through acts of structured deposition has not been actively studied. At the site of Altain Glen, Sandhead, the excavators suggested that the only two items of material culture recovered – a hammer stone and a flint flake – might represent evidence of such a practice. The site yielded a mid-second millennium date, suggesting that actions we now consider commonplace in the Neolithic (see Chapter 5 Neolithic) might continue in some form well into the Bronze Age.
- Some of the more exotic items which were used during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age in particular, and onwards into the Middle Bronze Age, though potentially on a smaller scale, were jet and amber. The use of jet varied from the rather modest belt sliders included in some Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age graves, to the imposing multi-stringed jet necklaces, again included in graves. The jet would have been sourced from the east coast of England, and the necklaces are thought to relate in some way to the sheet gold lunlae which are thought to be largely contemporary. Whether the gold objects inspired their jet counterparts or vice versa remains open to debate. Amber would have derived from the Baltic. Once again, it is often used to create small items for inclusion in Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Age graves, though amber necklaces are not unknown. Both jet and amber necklaces are virtually unknown in South West Scotland. Smaller beads of amber, jet or shale do however, occasionally occur in association with Middle and Late Bronze material across the region. Amber beads were found in association with the Middle Bronze Age Glentrool hoard, and a small cannel bead was recovered from the multi-period site at Hunterston.
- Finally, it is interesting to note that Bronze Age settlement sites in general produce very little diagnostic material culture. Lithics occur in small numbers, pottery is almost always absent and finds of metalwork are almost unknown. This is true for South West Scotland, although to date the number of settlement sites which have been excavated remains low. This absence of material culture may reflect patterns of selective deposition rather than impoverished communities. It is also possible that a wide range of organic materials, such as leather, textiles and wood, were in widespread use but these now rarely survive due to the harsh conditions of burial. One unusual item which does survive, and which gives us an idea of what may have been present at the time, was the leather or hide sheath which left traces on the dagger from the Lockerbie Academy burial.