Ancient Artifacts from the Bronze Age
Ancient Artifacts from the Bronze Age
Andrzej M. Izyk, curator of the Sancta Clara Collection Orichalcum is the metal of Atlantis. Almost everything written about it begins by overruling the one man who told us about it. Plato says, in plain words, that orichalcum was dug…
Cultural heritage of Persia, the earliest copper smelters of the Iranian Plateau, and what the Luristan bronzes in the Sancta Clara Collection can — and cannot — prove Epistemic key used throughout this article: ✅ established scholarship · ⚠️ argued…
Atacamite or Malachite? A Collector’s Field Protocol for Active Corrosion By Andrzej M. Izyk — Sancta Clara Collection / AncientBronzes.com There is a companion article on this site, The Language of Patina, which is about reading a surface: what the…
Three heavy copper axe-adzes from the Sancta Clara Collection — and what they reveal about native copper, arsenic, the memory of stone, and the one design flaw that would take two thousand years to solve. Three axes sit together on…
The Flanged Hilt: How Bronze Age Smiths Solved the Sword’s Weakest Point — from the Zagros to the Baltic: How Bronze Age smiths from the Zagros to the Baltic independently solved the sword’s weakest point — the blade-to-hilt junction —…
Unifying R. Maxwell-Hyslop, Western Asiatic Shaft-Hole Axes, Iraq 11 (1949), 90–129/130, pls. XXXIII–XXXIX, and J. Deshayes, Les outils de bronze, de l’Indus au Danube (IVe au IIe millénaire), BAH LXXI, 2 vols. (Paris, 1960). 0. Read this first: the status…
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…
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…
9 parts copper 1 part tin Bronze has a secret, and the secret is tin. Copper is everywhere — it outcrops on five continents, and almost every early complex society had a usable source within reach. But bronze, the alloy…