The Role of Metallurgy in Trade Development

As the pandemic demonstrated, disruption in the supply chain of critical materials can have an enormous impact, politically, economically, and socially. In this project researchers examine the nature and stability of past supply chains, and the cultural response to disruptions. Today such critical commodities include petroleum and strategic metals for electronics, such as cobalt and neodymium. In the Bronze Age, both kingdoms and communities were reliant on the rare metal tin for the production of bronze for both agricultural tools and weapons of war. As such, this project investigates the early sourcing and trade of tin through the analysis of tin isotopes. The research documents the response of trade networks to periods of archaeologic disruption such as the fall of early palatial centers. The results inform economists and other social scientists about the effect of supply chain disruptions and efficacy of responses in the past. This research includes the collaboration of scientists from multiple locations and trains undergraduate students in archaeological methods. All data collected will be made publicly available. The adoption of metals is considered to be a driver of sociopolitical complexity, which in turn is a key driver for technological innovation. Given the uneven geographic distribution of metal ores, exchange between resource-rich and resource-poor regions was necessary to allow for metal production, leading to the development of trade networks at various scales, as well as exploration, colonization, and imperialism in state structures. It has been argued that the invention and expansion of bronze metallurgy constituted a unique example of pre-modern hyper-regional interconnectivity due to the need to procure copper and tin. This project tests this hypothesis using the relatively new technique of tin isotope analysis. It also examines whether supply chains of various valued materials interconnect, as well as the characteristics that lead to sustainable networks. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.