Armada Xosé-Lois, Murillo-Barroso Mercedes, Charlton Mike (eds.) Metals, Minds and Mobility: Integrating Scientific Data with Archaeological Theory

Oxbow Books, 2018. — 200 p.Metals, Minds and Mobility seeks to integrate archaeometallurgical data with archaeological theory to address longstanding questions about mechanisms of exchange, mobility and social complexity in prehistory. The circulation of metal has long been viewed as a catalyst for social, economic and population changes in Europe. New techniques and perspectives derived from archaeological science can shed new light on the understanding of the movement of people, materials and technological knowledge. In recent years these science-based approaches have situated mobility at the forefront of the archaeological debate. Advances in the characterisation of metals and metallurgical residues combined with more sophisticated approaches to data analysis add greater resolution to provenance studies. Though offering better pictures of artefact source, the explanation of artefact distribution across geographic space requires the use of theoretically informed models and solid archaeological evidence to discern differences between the circulation of raw materials, ingots, objects, craftspeople and populations. Bringing together many leading expert contributions address topics that include the invention, innovation and transmission of metallurgical knowledge; archaeometric based models of exchange; characterization and discrimination of different modes of material circulation; and the impact of metals on social complexity. The 13 papers are organised in three main sections dealing with key debates in archaeology: transmission of metallurgical technologies, knowledge and ideas; prestige economies and exchange; and circulation of metal as commodities and concludes with a review current approaches, situating the volume in a broader context and identifying future research directions.Xosé-Lois Armada is a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, Santiago de Compostela. His research interests are in protohistoric metallurgy and its social interpretation, prestige objects and metals as an expression of power, ancient mining and metal as a motivating factor for interactions and social change on a regional scale
Mercedes Murillo-Barroso is a Marie Curie IE Fellow based at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. Her research interests focus on social archaeology especially concerning the debates about the origins of metallurgy and its relationship with social inequality.
Mike Charlton is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Archaeology, having received his PhD from the same in 2007. His research focuses on the integration of materials characterisation (especially analytical chemistry) with Darwinian approaches to archaeology in an effort to better understand the evolution of craft production and exchange systems as well as their interrelationships with other aspects of the social and natural environments