Metal Supply and Social Networks in the Irish Later Bronze Age

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For the entire duration of the Bronze Age (c. 2500-800 BC) metallurgy provided one of the most significant drivers for both technological and societal change. The ubiquitous and growing demand for copper, when copper ores only occur in some closely circumscribed geographical areas, shaped new exchange networks and established new communities of practice. Over the course of the later 3rd to early 1st millennia BC, exhaustion of some existing copper supply sources and the opening up of others led to periodic changes in regional and inter-regional socio-economic interactions. Often these changes in copper supply patterns align with wider transformations in the archaeological record. For Britain, the outline of these developments is now reasonably well understood, but the same does not hold true for other parts of Atlantic Europe. For the Later Bronze Age of Ireland in particular, we still lack reliable data that could provide us with insights into changes in copper supply patterns and the social networks that underpinned them. The present project aims to address this gap by adopting a multidisciplinary approach. It will establish the sources of the copper consumed in Ireland after the island lost its role as the main supplier of that metal in the British Isles, and on this basis will reassess the island's changing role in wider regional and inter-regional socio-economic interactions. The project will also provide a more reliable chronological framework for Irish Later Bronze Age metalwork and the copper supply patterns underpinning its production, which in turn will allow us to assess how changes in these patterns relate to other transformations in the archaeological record, concerning population density, land-use and settlement structures, as well as the emergence of powerful chiefdom-type polities that controlled crucial economic resources and trade. In doing so, the project will facilitate the placing of these developments in a wider Insular and European context.