Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie gGmbH, Mannheim, Germany.
Department of Classical Studies, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2019 Jun 26;14(6):e0218326. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0218326. eCollection 2019.
The origin of the tin used for the production of bronze in the Eurasian Bronze Age is still one of the mysteries in prehistoric archaeology. In the past, numerous studies were carried out on archaeological bronze and tin objects with the aim of determining the sources of tin, but all failed to find suitable fingerprints. In this paper we investigate a set of 27 tin ingots from well-known sites in the eastern Mediterranean Sea (Mochlos, Uluburun, Hishuley Carmel, Kfar Samir south, Haifa) that had been the subject of previous archaeological and archaeometallurgical research. By using a combined approach of tin and lead isotopes together with trace elements it is possible to narrow down the potential sources of tin for the first time. The strongly radiogenic composition of lead in the tin ingots from Israel allows the calculation of a geological model age of the parental tin ores of 291 ± 17 Ma. This theoretical formation age excludes Anatolian, central Asian and Egyptian tin deposits as tin sources since they formed either much earlier or later. On the other hand, European tin deposits of the Variscan orogeny agree well with this time span so that an origin from European deposits is suggested. With the help of the tin isotope composition and the trace elements of the objects it is further possible to exclude many tin resources from the European continent and, considering the current state of knowledge and the available data, to conclude that Cornish tin mines are the most likely suppliers for the 13th-12th centuries tin ingots from Israel. Even though a different provenance seems to be suggested for the tin from Mochlos and Uluburun by the actual data, these findings are of great importance for the archaeological interpretation of the trade routes and the circulation of tin during the Late Bronze Age. They demonstrate that the trade networks between the eastern Mediterranean and some place in the east that are assumed for the first half of the 2nd millennium BCE (as indicated by textual evidence from Kültepe/Kaneš and Mari) did not exist in the same way towards the last quarter of the millennium.
在欧亚青铜时代，用于青铜生产的锡的起源仍然是史前考古学中的一个谜团。过去，人们对考古青铜和锡制品进行了大量研究，旨在确定锡的来源，但都未能找到合适的指纹。在本文中，我们研究了一组来自东地中海著名遗址（莫奇洛斯、乌鲁布伦、希舒利·卡梅尔、卡法尔·萨米尔南部、海法）的 27 个锡锭，这些锡锭此前曾是考古学和考古冶金学研究的对象。通过结合使用锡和铅同位素以及微量元素的方法，可以首次缩小锡的潜在来源范围。来自以色列的锡锭中铅的强烈放射性成因组成使得可以计算出母体锡矿石的地质模式年龄为 291±17Ma。这个理论形成年龄排除了安纳托利亚、中亚和埃及的锡矿床作为锡源，因为它们形成的时间要么早得多，要么晚得多。另一方面，与海西造山运动有关的欧洲锡矿床与这个时间段非常吻合，因此可以推断出其来源是欧洲矿床。借助锡同位素组成和物体的微量元素，可以进一步排除欧洲大陆的许多锡资源，并考虑到目前的知识状况和可用数据，可以得出结论，康沃尔锡矿是最有可能为来自以色列的 13-12 世纪锡锭提供锡的来源。尽管实际数据似乎表明莫奇洛斯和乌鲁布伦的锡来自不同的产地，但这些发现对于解释贸易路线和青铜时代晚期锡的流通具有重要意义。它们表明，在公元前 2 千年的前半叶（根据库尔腾/卡内什和马里的文本证据表明）假设的东地中海与东方某个地方之间的贸易网络，在公元前 1200 年的最后一个季度并没有以同样的方式存在。
