Discovering the (R)Evolution of EurAsian Steppe Metallurgy: Social and environmental impact of the Bronze Age steppes metal-driven economy

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The Eurasian Bronze Age trade of metals has long been recognised as the driving force of the West-East economic network, later known as the Silk Roads. Central to this network was the demand for copper-base items from the rising political leadership of agrarian states and empires and the richness of Eurasian Steppe ore deposits. Previous steppe research often relied on materials that are scarce by nature, like organics, or highly mobile and recyclable, such as metal artefacts, leading to a limited view of steppe communities as relatively homogenous societies that carried objects and genes and simplifying their trade networks with arrows and circles on the map of Eurasia. Preliminary research by PI and colleagues has revealed evidence for an unparalleled scale of exploitation, production and circulation of Bronze Age metals within and beyond the vast grasslands, suggesting that the steppe communities might have been the key drivers of a metal-based and interconnected economy across Eurasia.How and why did Bronze Age steppe metallurgy scale up to unprecedented levels of production and circulation (c. 3500-1000 BC)? Studies exploring patterns of mobility of steppe metals and societies rarely focus on innovation in metal production and its environmental impact. Yet production debris, in particular metallurgical slag, carries fundamental information about complex interactions between environment, metallurgy and society. I will take an original interdisciplinary approach to analyse steppe metal production and plant debris, and to create and predict multi-layered datasets that will feed into high-resolution explanatory models for the evolution, organisation and environmental impact of Eurasian Steppe metallurgy in the context of Eurasian connectedness. Integrated approaches from Archaeology, Geography, Materials, Environmental, Earth and Complexity Sciences and Artificial Intelligence will deliver a paradigm shift in generating new knowledge of Eurasian (pre)history.