The humble stone tools of a gold craftsman from 4,000 years ago

4,000 years ago, a Bronze Age tribe buried two of its members near Stonehenge.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
16 December 2022 Friday 06:49
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The humble stone tools of a gold craftsman from 4,000 years ago

4,000 years ago, a Bronze Age tribe buried two of its members near Stonehenge. This burial mound at Upton Lovell was first excavated in 1801 and its grave goods are now on display at the Wiltshire Museum in Devizes, England. Nobody noticed anything special 200 years ago, beyond the importance that those amateur archaeologists of the 18th century gave to the antiquity of the find.

Researchers from the University of Leicester have re-studied all these stone and copper alloy objects and have discovered that it was something unique. Those seemingly irrelevant materials were actually prehistoric tools for working gold.

The analysis carried out by the team led by Dr. Christina Tsoraki studied the wear of the grave goods and determined that there were gold residues on the surface of the utensils. The instruments, moreover, had been used for a variety of purposes, from hammers and anvils to smoothing other materials.

The findings prompted Tsoraki's group to work with Dr. Chris Standish, an expert in Early Bronze Age goldsmithing at the University of Southampton. Together they looked at the debris using a scanning electron microscope coupled with an energy dispersive spectrometer to see if it was ancient or modern.

The investigation, according to the experts in an article published in the Antiquity magazine, confirmed that there is gold residue in up to five artifacts from the burial. They also found that these remains would be related to goldsmithing that was done throughout the UK during the Bronze Age.

Upton Lovell's burial already held a special place in archaeology. Located near Stonehenge, it is marked with an earthen mound. Two people were entombed at this location along with a wide range of grave goods, including a large number of pierced bone tips believed to have been part of an elaborate costume.

In the 2000s, Dr. Colin Shell identified possible traces of gold in one of the stone grave goods. The new analysis has not only confirmed this trace, but has found four others with gold on their surfaces and characteristic traces of wear, linking a broader set of items from the burial to the goldsmithing process.

These remains are ancient, and archaeologists suggest that the tools were used to make multi-material objects in which a central part was fashioned from jet, schist, amber, wood, or copper, and then decorated with a thin layer of gold.

The man buried at Upton Lovell was a highly skilled craftsman. His ceremonial cloak decorated with pierced animal bones also hints that he was a spiritual leader and one of the few people in the early Bronze Age who understood the magic of metallurgy.

“This is a really exciting find. At a recent exhibition at the British Museum, the public was wowed by incredible gold works from 4,000 years ago. What our work has revealed is the humble set of stone tools that were used to make these objects in prehistory," says Dr Rachel Crellin of the University of Leicester.

Lisa Brown, curator of the Wiltshire Museum, believes that this discovery "helps to understand the highly specialized processes involved in the manufacture of silverware in the Bronze Age."