Did globalisation already begin in the Neolithic?

During the Neolithic period in northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia, stones such as flint were important materials that were exchanged over hundreds of kilometres. Nevertheless, the first objects made of copper appear during this period, although there is no evidence of Stone Age mining of copper in northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia. So where did the raw material for the artefacts come from? How did contact with new raw materials and technologies affect societies? A study by the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1266 “Scales of Transformation” at Kiel University (CAU) deals with these and other questions. It was published on 10 May in the renowned international journal PLOS ONE.

Where did the copper come from?

For the early Neolithic artefacts of the north (c. 4100-3300 BCE), people probably used metal from the copper ore deposits in south-eastern Europe. In particular, the Serbian mining areas are a possibility. The most probable copper sources for the few Middle Neolithic artefacts (c. 3300-2800 BCE) seem to come from the Slovakian Ore Mountains, the Serbian mining areas and the Eastern Alps. Artefacts from the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 2300-1700 BCE) were probably made using deposits from the Slovakian Ore Mountains and in the Alpine region. For the artefacts that the researchers dated to after 2000 BCE, the Great Orme mine in Wales also seems to have been one of the sources of copper for the metals studied.

A connection of southern Scandinavia with early centres of copper metallurgy in south-eastern Central Europe had already been discussed by researchers in earlier studies. In general, though, they considered the origin of the ore for many copper artefacts to be in the Alpine region. “However, more recent investigations show that the data available so far can be classified as unreliable,” says Dr. Jan Piet Brozio, head of the study. Therefore, the Kiel project participants selected a total of 45 Neolithic copper objects for new lead isotope analyses as part of the study. “This is the largest sample of Neolithic objects from the Northern European Plain and Southern Scandinavia to date,” Brozio elaborates. “Various archaeological artefacts such as axes, spirals and chisels from the early to late Neolithic period and the early Bronze Age were examined. The method for interpreting the analysed data is based on comparing the geochemistry and lead isotope ratios of archaeological artefacts with the analytical data of minerals from copper ore deposits.”

Copper use and knowledge exchange

The first integration of copper metallurgy and the use of copper objects in Neolithic societies in northern Central Europe and southern Scandinavia should not be seen as a purely technological advance. Archaeologists also interpret them as part of a broader development. “These developments included the emergence of new communication and exchange networks, as well as changes in the subsistence economy and new technologies such as the introduction of the hook plough or wheel and wagon,” explains Prof. Dr. Johannes Müller, spokesperson of CRC 1266, because in addition to objects made of metal and jadeite, knowledge of new types of grain and ideas of architecture, for example, were also transported to the north.

The early establishment of copper metallurgy, however, was not a sustainable process, even though it occurred in what are understood by experts to have been Copper Age societies. For despite an import boom, the metal and the knowledge of its processing did not become established in the Neolithic societies of the fourth millennium BCE. Rather, they became almost meaningless. It was not until the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age that Norse societies integrated copper metallurgy into their economic system in such a way that these societies reached a “point of no return” with regard to metallurgy, and increasingly used metal artefacts as tools in their subsistence economy, as well as to represent power structures.

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