The first smiths worked with copper and gold. Only when tin came to be added routinely to copper to make bronze did metal replace stone for tools and weapons. The innovation transformed Europe and Asia, creating new classes of makers and traders, and new ways to accumulate wealth and express power. And now a surprising study reveals that most of the tin – archaeologists estimate hundreds of tons a year – came from south-west England.

Now a surprising study reveals that most of Europe’s Bronze Age tin – archaeologists estimate hundreds of tons a year – came from south-west England

Although tin made up only a tenth of bronze, it was much harder to find than copper. Key tin sources were in the far west or east – principally Devon and Cornwall, or Central Asia. This previously presented archaeologists with a long-standing puzzle: the first regular bronzeworking occurred in West Asia, where there is no tin. So where did it come from? And how did it get there?

Enter scientists and archaeologists from Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK, and a pioneering project led by a team at Durham University. Deploying new analytical technologies, they looked at hundreds of ore samples and ancient artefacts. Using three different approaches – studying trace elements, and radioactive isotopes in tin and lead – this allowed them to triangulate data where one or two of the techniques could not alone pin down sources. The element indium, for example, is relatively common in English tin, but rare in smaller deposits in France and Iberia. Localised tin in Germany, otherwise similar to that in Devon and Cornwall, comes from older rocks as dated by lead isotopes.

That English tin should have been so central to major cultural change across prehistoric Europe is unexpected, though there were already hints this was the case.  The gold on the Nebra Sky Disc, for example, the centrepiece of the British Museum’s 2022 World of Stonehenge exhibition, was recently shown to be Cornish.

Tin-bronze working came to dominate first in southern England around 2200–2100 BC. It was rapidly adopted in Ireland, then across northern and central Europe and a century or so later in Iberia, before finally reaching Greece, the Balkans and Egypt by 1600–1300 BC.

Geology was the driver. Not only did Cornwall and Devon have exceptional amounts of tin, but it was easy to reach. Originally deposited in granite as a hard, heavy mineral known as cassiterite, over millions of years it had come to lie in concentrated layers in stream beds, where it could be simply dug out from loose gravel and silt. Such placer deposits, as they are called, were the main tin source into medieval times and beyond. Only in the 18th century did mining and heavy machinery develop, leading to the tin and copper industry.  Occasionally, Victorian workers found picks and shovels left by their Bronze Age forebears.

Copper and gold had long been worked on the continent before tin was quarried in England, so why did it take so long to develop in Britain? The appearance of metallurgy was but one of many changes across Europe that occurred after 3000 BC, stimulated by migrations from the steppes to the east. New artefact styles (most famously, decorated Beaker pots) and burial traditions, for example, suggest that there was a complete reinvention of society and religion. For reasons yet to be explained, however, these changes didn’t touch Britain – which was busy building Stonehenge – until 2450 BC. Then quite suddenly, the isles were populated with immigrants, leaving a marked impression in our DNA and bringing all the new fashions, including smiths. Hungry for copper and gold, they would soon have found the Devon and Cornish ores and thus, inevitably, tin.

A string of shipwrecks testify to the trade, or at least their metal cargoes do, lying on the sea bed where timbers have decayed. Two off the Devon coast had some 80 tin ingots between them.  A ton of ores, scrap and finished tools was recovered from another wreck in the French Mediterranean. Three wrecks near Israel and one by Uluburun, off the Turkish coast, contain further ingots and metalwork – the Uluburun ship carried ten tons of copper and a proportionate ton of tin.

The new study shows that in every case but the Turkish ship, the tin came from south-west England. That may have been the same at Uluburun, but for now at least lead contamination prevents a definitive answer. Tin ingots from the Israeli ships carry a vivid message: they are marked with geometric symbols of an undeciphered Cypriot script, dating from 1400–1300 BC. Metal must have been passed between intermediaries. The script could not have been known to Cornish tinners any more than Mediterranean sailors would have been familiar with British stone circles. Bronze Age globalisation expanded the connections of local communities.

Classical writers appear to single out Cornwall as a tin source. Pytheas the Greek, writing in 320 BC, describes tinners trading from an island thought to be St Michael’s Mount. Benjamin Roberts, Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology at Durham, tells me he is about to start excavating there, looking for signs of smithing and tinners’ homes.  A new vision of Bronze Age Europe beckons.

The tin study is published in the June issue of Antiquity.