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Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia.

ABSTRACT: This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual low-grade mineralization remaining after extensive exploitation in the Early Bronze Age. The results of our metallurgical analysis, along with archaeological and textual data, illustrate that a culturally diverse, multiregional, and multivector system underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. The demonstrable scale of this connectivity reveals a vast and disparate network that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on supposedly hegemonic institutions of large, centralized states.

SUBMITTER: Powell W

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9710885 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia.

Powell Wayne W Frachetti Michael M Pulak Cemal C Bankoff H Arthur HA Barjamovic Gojko G Johnson Michael M Mathur Ryan R Pigott Vincent C VC Price Michael M Yener K Aslihan KA

Science advances 20221130 48

This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual ...[more]

PMID: 36449619

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Dataset Information

Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia.

Publications

Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia.

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