Recherche des sources du cuivre utilisé à l’âge du Bronze à travers l’étude des lingots des dépôts rituels terrestres

During the Bronze Age periods, lots of copper and tin were used to product bronze weapons, tools, jewellery etc. Ore copper deposits are irregularly distributed in Europe and only few ones are located in France. Despite this lack of raw material, in numerous areas in France, bronze metal was intensively worked. This feature can be evidenced by the presence of numerous ritual terrestrial hoards, which may contained several thousands artifacts, entire or fragmented, and with or without copper ingots. This project aims at restituting trade ways through Europe, especially from or to western France, thanks to the copper sources. For this purpose, archeometric studies will be performed including morphological description, elementary chemical analyses (ICP-OES) and lead isotopic analyses (LI by MC-ICP-MS). As bronze artifacts could be produced by recycling of old artifacts, leading to mixed chemical compositions and to loosed chemical signatures of sources, this project focuses on copper ingots. These types of artifacts contain chemical signatures of sources. Indeed, they were produced in smelting furnaces situated close to mines and exported through Europe. Ingots from some western areas Bronze age hoards will be studied and compared to those from foreign countries, especially the copper-producing ones.