Resumen de Characterising copper-based metals in Britain in the first millennium AD: a preliminary quantification of metal flow and recycling
A. M. Pollard, Peter Bray, Chris Gosden, Andrew Wilson, Helena Hamerow
For many years, archaeologists and archaeometallurgists have suggested that recycled copper might have constituted a significant component of the metal in circulation in Britain during the first millennium AD. They have generally failed, however, to suggest a way of observing and quantifying this phenomenon. Here the authors propose a new methodology to rectify this. A large new database of chemical analyses of British copper alloys dating from the late Iron Age to the early medieval period demonstrates the potential of their approach; it shows that significant and measureable changes occur in metal circulation at the beginning of the first century AD and in the early Saxon period.
