Sub-Project MC 8.2 Transfer of Innovation in the Near East in the Early Bronze Age

Project Leader: Ulrike Wischnewski

This project studied the emergence of tin bronze casting in Early Bronze Age (c. 2900-2000 BC) southern Mesopotamia, mainly concentrating on the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. Whereas previous works had focused either on the material or philological evidence, this project integrated material culture as well as textual evidence and managed to reveal a more complex understanding of the impact of the new technology on southern Mesopotamian societies. Written sources inform us about metal sources and the very sophisticated technology of metal production, which were developed by highly specialized craftsmen as well as about ritual and social practices during which bronze objects were used (e.g. burial rites). Here, objects from different contexts like burials, hoards from sacral and palatial buildings and also the settlements Ur, Kish and Uruk were studied in order to understand the development of tin-bronze casting. The particular focus was placed on the relationship between tin-bronze, copper and arsenic-bronze technologies. As metal technology was already established in Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia, tin-bronze casting could be integrated in the existing chaîne opératoire. The experiences made by alloying copper and arsenic could be translated and transformed for developing the new alloy. Even if the reason for appropriating an innovation is not traceable, there are clearly many factors involved and the interwovenness of technology, material culture and society is one of them. In order to understand the reason for the appropriation of innovation, the project applied Pfaffenberger’s (1992) approach of the entanglement of technique, material culture and the socio-technological system as well as Hodder’s (2011; 2014) “human-thing entanglement”. As neither tin nor copper are natural resources in southern Mesopotamia, the project also studied the relationship between the transfer of raw materials and of knowledge, as the latter could either have been translated together with traded materials or via “cross-craft interaction” (Brysbaert 2011), for example the exchange of pyro-technological knowledge between metallurgist and potters. Finally, light was shed on the societal change as a possible result of the appropriation of the innovation of tin-bronze casting.