Lead in the Levant during the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages
•Most Late Bronze Age (LB) lead in the Southern Levant originated in Sardinia.•Levantine supply of Sardinian metals continued into the Iron Age.•Provenance of metals is not a suitable tool for tracking early Phoenician trade.•LB lead circulation reflects Egyptian and Hittite spheres of influence.•Le...
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| Published in: | Journal of archaeological science, reports reports, 2022-12, Vol.46, p.103649, Article 103649 |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | •Most Late Bronze Age (LB) lead in the Southern Levant originated in Sardinia.•Levantine supply of Sardinian metals continued into the Iron Age.•Provenance of metals is not a suitable tool for tracking early Phoenician trade.•LB lead circulation reflects Egyptian and Hittite spheres of influence.•Lead isotopes suggest a Northern Levantine port of origin for the Uluburun (Ugarit?).•Lead and copper were not commercially controlled by the same agents.
Probably due to its relative scarcity in the archaeological record of the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages, lead is seldom the focus of archaeometallurgical research on these periods. In the current study we turn to legacy lead isotope data in order to provenance lead artifacts from Eastern Mediterranean contexts, dated to the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. These data shed new light on the circulation of lead in the Eastern Mediterranean prior, during and after the collapse of the Bronze Age global trade systems. We provide further support to the notion that lead from Sardinia was circulating in Eastern Mediterranean markets and reached the Levant already during the Late Bronze Age. We found that this trade was more common in the South-eastern Mediterranean (in comparison to the North-eastern Mediterranean), probably as the result of geopolitical circumstances related to the distinct spheres of influence of Egypt and Hatti at that time. Moreover, it seems that lead from Sardinia was continuously shipped towards the east also in the face of the changing geo-economical dynamics during the transition between the Bronze and Iron Ages. The data were obtained mostly through the OXALID database. The current paper also aims at emphasizing the importance of shared open access databases for lead isotopes in archaeometallurgical research. |
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| ISSN: | 2352-409X |