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XIII/2/2022
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Copper Supply Networks in the Early Bronze Age of South-east Spain:
New Evidence from the Lower Segura Valley
Dirk Brandherm
1*
, Ignacio Montero Ruiz
2
, Milena Müller-Kissing
3
,
Alexander Maass
4
, Emilio Diz Ardid
5
1
Queen’s University Belfast, School of Natural and Built Environment, Belfast, BT7 1NN, United Kingdom
2
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científcas, Instituto de Historia, Calle Albasanz 26–28, E-28037 Madrid, Spain
3
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Am Bergbaumuseum 31, D-44791 Bochum, Germany
4
Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpfege, Arbeitsstelle Montanarchäologie, Bergtal 18, D-38640 Goslar, Germany
5
Museo Arqueológico Comarcal de Orihuela, Calle Hospital 3–5, E-03300 Orihuela, Spain
1. Introduction
This paper presents results from a programme of analyses
undertaken on copper ores from the Lower Segura Valley,
straddling the provinces of Alicante and Murcia in south-
east Spain, and on metal objects from sites of the El Argar
culture in that same study area (Figure 1). Our programme
of analyses was conducted following a feld survey project
that aimed at identifying evidence for pre-modern mining
activities in the Lower Segura Valley (Brandherm and
Maass, 2010; Brandherm
et al.
, 2013; 2014). Both in terms
of the archaeology of its pre-modern mining remains and of
the characterisation of relevant ore bodies, the study area has
received relatively little attention in comparison to the much
larger nearby mining district of Cartagena and Mazarrón, as
well as other mining areas further afeld in southern Iberia.
The principal aim of our project was to remedy that situation
and enable a full assessment of the signifcance of extractive
industries and their contribution to past metal supply
networks in the region.
One of the main points of interest in this regard was to
determine to what extent the exploitation of local copper
ores might have contributed to the metal supply of Early
Bronze Age (EBA) settlements in the region. During the
EBA the Lower Segura Valley constituted the northernmost
expanse of the El Argar culture area (Brandherm, 1996;
Martínez Monleón, 2014), and the extent to which copper
supply within the El Argar culture may have been centrally
controlled by a political élite continues to be a matter of
considerable debate (Lull Santiago
et al.
, 2010a; 2010b;
Montero Ruiz and Murillo Barroso, 2010).
On one side of that debate we have a model according to
which the bulk of El Argar copper would have originated
from the Linares mining district in the eastern Sierra Morena,
Volume XIII ● Issue 2/2022 ● Pages 129–141
*Corresponding author. E-mail: d.brandherm@qub.ac.uk
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received: 18
th
November 2021
Accepted: 11
th
April 2022
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24916/iansa.2022.2.3
Key words:
Bronze Age
copper
supply networks
lead isotopes
minor elements
trace elements
ABSTRACT
The range of copper sources and the nature of metal supply networks used by the El Argar culture of
south-east Spain have been the subject of a long-running debate. On one side of this debate we have
a model that envisages supply for much of the El Argar culture coming from a closely circumscribed
region and controlled centrally by a political élite, while on the other side we have a model of a more
decentralised supply network drawing on a wider, geographically more dispersed range of ore sources
that is lacking the same level of political control. The available archaeometallurgical data are not
entirely conclusive in this respect. While results from the existing, comparatively small body of lead
isotope analyses have been taken to support, at least to some extent, the idea of a single main source
region supplying most if not all of the El Argar culture area with copper, results from the much larger
but not easily interpreted body of minor-element analyses would appear to lend support to the notion of
a more decentralised supply. In this contribution we present new analytical data from the Lower Segura
Valley, both from local copper ores and from local El Argar artefacts, which provide new insights
relevant to this debate.
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IANSA 2022 ● XIII/2 ● 129–141
Dirk Brandherm, Ignacio Montero Ruiz, Milena Müller-Kissing, Alexander Maass, Emilio Diz Ardid: Copper Supply Networks in the Early Bronze Age
of South-east Spain: New Evidence from the Lower Segura Valley
130
with the distribution of the metal tightly controlled by the
ruling class of an emerging El Argar state. This model was
originally based on a limited set of lead isotope data obtained
as part of the Gatas project through a programme of analyses
undertaken at the Oxford Isotrace Laboratory (Stos-Gale
et al.
, 1999). Subsequently it also came to draw on the lack
of direct evidence for extractive metallurgy from El Argar
contexts other than those of the Linares mining district
(Escanilla, 2016, pp.430–432).
On the other side of the debate we have a model of multiple,
geographically dispersed ore sources providing El Argar
society with copper through a non-centralised supply system.
This model was originally informed by statistically signifcant
variation in the trace-element contents of copper-base metal
objects from a range of diferent El Argar settlements, which
seems to suggest that not all of the relevant sites were supplied
from the same ore body and clearly contradicts the notion of
a single supply source for El Argar copper (Montero Ruiz,
1999, p.350). Subsequent additions to the body of relevant
lead isotope data also appear to indicate that diferent sources
contributed to the copper supply of El Argar society (Stos-
Gale, 2001, p.454; Müller-Kissing, 2014, p.56; Murillo-
Barroso
et al.
, 2015, pp.152–154), but the number of available
analyses still only provides limited coverage of the very
diverse range of relevant ore bodies in southern Spain, and the
respective body of data continues to present some difculties
of interpretation which only an approach combining lead
isotope and trace-element data can potentially overcome
(Montero Ruiz, 2018, pp.322–324; Murillo-Barroso
et al.
,
2019, pp.606–607).
The isotopic and trace-element characterisation of ore
bodies and El Argar copper-base metal objects from the
Lower Segura Valley presented here constitutes an important
step in flling the remaining gaps in this jigsaw.
2. Methodology
As part of our feld survey project, copper ore samples were
collected at diferent locations in the Sierra de Orihuela and
Sierra de Santomera, either directly from surface outcrops of ore
bodies or from spoil tips left by modern exploration or mining
activities. None of the analysed ore samples was retrieved from
an EBA context, although several of the respective sampling
locations are situated in the immediate vicinity of prehistoric
settlement sites (Cabezo Mal Nombre, Cerro de la Mina).