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The origins of metallurgy in central Italy: new radiometric evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Andrea Dolfini ,
Renato Peroni  and
To the memory of Lawrence Barfield
Andrea Dolfini
Affiliation:
*School of Historical Studies, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK (Email: andrea.dolfini@ncl.ac.uk)
Renato Peroni
Affiliation:
*School of Historical Studies, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK (Email: andrea.dolfini@ncl.ac.uk)
To the memory of Lawrence Barfield
Affiliation:
*School of Historical Studies, Armstrong Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK (Email: andrea.dolfini@ncl.ac.uk)
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Abstract

Precision radiocarbon dating continues to bring historical order into key moments of social and economic change, such as the use of metals. Here the author dates human bone in graves with metal artefacts and shows that copper, antimony and silver were being fashioned into daggers and beads in west central Italy by the early to mid fourth millennium cal BC; but the new-fangled objects had not reached contemporary cemeteries on the other side of the Apennines. We can perhaps look forward to a time when the arrival of metallurgy in Europe is neither diffusionary nor piecemeal, but the result of real historical events and social contacts, mapped for us by radiocarbon.

Keywords

ItalyNeolithicCopper AgeChalcolithicBronze Ageearly metallurgyRinaldone culturearsenical copperantimonysilver
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 325 , September 2010 , pp. 707 - 723
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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