Ancient Artifacts from the Bronze Age
Ancient Artifacts from the Bronze Age
The Alloy and the Altar: how copper and tin interconnected trade network distributed the Neolithic and Bronze Age beliefs and now seemingly forgotten gods that still influence us from behind the veil of repressed memories. There is one fact about…
By Andrzej M. Izyk — Sancta Clara Collection / AncientBronzes.com There is a suit of armour in the Archaeological Museum of Nafplion that has ruined a great many films for me. It was pulled out of a chamber tomb at…
The paradox of a metalworking civilisation There is a paradox at the heart of Egyptian metallurgy, and it is worth stating plainly at the outset, because everything else in this article hangs from it. No ancient culture worked precious metal…
Bronze Age warfare on the river the Slavs would later call Dołęża When a volunteer archaeologist named Ronald Borgwardt found a human upper-arm bone with a flint arrowhead still driven into it, eroding out of a riverbank in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in…
The Horned Warriors of Two Seas: The Nuragic Bronzetti and the Veksø Horned Helmet Connection Everyone knows the Vikings wore horned helmets. Everyone is wrong. No horned helmet has ever been found in a Viking grave; the image was invented…
The Black Gold of the Alchemists: Corinthian Bronze, Hepatizon, and the Art of Intentional Patina Epistemic key used throughout this article: ✅ established scholarship · ⚠️ argued inference or actively contested · ◆ the author’s own framework There is a…
The Clasp of Civilisation: A Field Guide to Ancient Fibulae and Garment Hooks For the better part of three thousand years, the peoples of Europe and the Near East did not wear clothing in the sense we understand today. They…
The Sworn Blade: The Sky Father and the Weapons of the Oath There is a particular kind of object in this collection that I have never been able to file away as merely a weapon. A sword such as Lot…
The Steppe Archers: Scythian Bronze Arrowheads and the Technology of Mounted Warfare There is a particular kind of object in this collection that I find myself returning to far more often than its modest size would seem to justify. It…
We have to begin by unlearning a word. When we look at a small ancient bronze of a woman, a bird, an ibex, or a seated god, the modern eye reaches instinctively for the category “art” — a thing made…