Metal Supply and Social Networks in the Irish Later Bronze Age

在整个青铜时代（C。公元前2500-800年）冶金为技术和社会变革提供了最重要的驱动力之一。当铜矿石只出现在一些严格限定的地理区域时，对铜的需求无处不在且不断增长，形成了新的交易网络，建立了新的实践社区。在公元前3世纪末到公元前1世纪初的过程中，一些现有铜供应来源的枯竭和其他来源的开放导致了区域和区域间社会经济互动的周期性变化。通常，铜供应模式的这些变化与考古记录中更广泛的转变相一致。对英国来说，这些发展的轮廓现在已经相当清楚了，但大西洋欧洲的其他地区却并非如此。特别是对于爱尔兰的青铜时代晚期，我们仍然缺乏可靠的数据，无法深入了解铜供应模式的变化以及支撑这种变化的社交网络。本项目旨在通过采取多学科办法来弥补这一差距。它将确定爱尔兰在失去其作为不列颠群岛铜主要供应国的地位后所消费铜的来源，并在此基础上重新评估爱尔兰在更广泛的区域和区域间社会经济互动中不断变化的作用。该项目还将为爱尔兰青铜时代晚期的金属制品及其生产所依赖的铜供应模式提供更可靠的年代框架，这反过来将使我们能够评估这些模式的变化如何与考古记录中的其他转变相关，涉及人口密度，土地使用和定居结构，以及控制关键经济资源和贸易的强大酋长型政体的出现。在这样做时，该项目将有助于将这些发展置于更广泛的岛屿和欧洲背景下。

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.