Debunking Deterministic Narratives of Technological Development Through Experimentation: A Critical Review of the Prehistory of Tin Bronze Alloying

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-024-09661-w RESEARCH Debunking Deterministic Narratives of Technological Development Through Experimentation: A Critical Review of the Prehistory of Tin Bronze Alloying Julia Montes‑Landa1 · Simon Timberlake1 · Marcos Martinón‑Torres1,2 Accepted: 20 June 2024 © The Author(s) 2024 Abstract The currently accepted narrative on the prehistory of bronze alloying technology follows deterministic, outdated assumptions of technological progression that ignore the role of contextual and performance factors in the decision-making processes, thus neglecting human agency. In essence, it is expected that newer techniques were overarchingly more advanced than older ones and hence replaced them. The validity of this narrative should be challenged and revised. A critical analysis of worldwide literature exposed that, contrary to predictions of the accepted theory, (1) the oldest alloying techniques persisted for centuries after newer ones were invented, and (2) several techniques usually coexisted in the same contexts. We hypothesised that these counterintuitive findings could be explained by differences in performance between techniques, (dis)advantageous at different settings. To obtain empirical information on the performance of techniques and test for behaviourally relevant performance differences between them, a series of alloying experiments were conducted. The results show that all techniques can produce objects of broadly equivalent quality while offering different trade-offs during production. Therefore, every technique—or a combination—can be advantageous under certain conditions, and there are no grounds to support a linear trajectory of substitution. These results debunk the traditional narrative and predict that co-smelting and cementation techniques were more frequently practiced in the past than hitherto assumed. Our propositions prompt a readjustment of explanatory models of bronze production organisation, trade, and consumption while opening unexplored research paths for archaeology and the history of technology. Keywords Co-smelting · Cementation · Co-melting · Experimental archaeology · Performance matrix · Technology Extended author information available on the last page of the article Vol.:(0123456789) J. Montes‑Landa et al. Introduction Traditional histories of technology explain technological development as a rather simple, unilinear process that Pfaffenberger (1992) denominated the Standard View of technology. These narratives start with the discovery of rudimentary technologies and their irrevocable evolution into more advanced ones. During the last few decades, however, archaeologists have welcomed alternative explanations of technological change that integrate a holistic understanding of technological choices within their socio-economic and environmental settings (e.g. Adams, 1999; Amati et al., 2019; Boyd & Richerson, 1985; Buchanan et al., 2017; Dobres, 2000; Dobres & Hoffman, 1999; Eerkens & Lipo, 2014; Henrich, 2001, 2009; Killick, 2015; Kim, 2001; Martinelli, 2004; Nelson, 1991; Östborn & Gerding, 2015; Roux et al., 2018; Sáenz-Samper & Martinón-Torres, 2017; Scholnick, 2012; Valcárcel Rojas et al., 2010). Despite this general rejection of unidirectional models of technological development, remnant ideas remain scattered across currently accepted explanatory theories not only of the past but also of the present (Zuboff, 2019). Questioning the validity of these enduring unilinear views can generate new anthropological insight into past societies and expose under-explored research arenas. These knowledge gaps reveal flaws in our received wisdom and promote targeted research to generate more robust explanations of technological change. Whether it leads to the adjustment of previous assumptions or the proposition of radical alternatives, this process can trigger a cascade effect when reconsidering related aspects of the role of technology within a given society. Thus, challenging assumptions ultimately contributes to a better understanding of the complex relationship between technological and societal change across time and space. A prominent example of a largely accepted linear narrative of technological progress is the prehistory of tin bronze making. Since the alloying technique used cannot be inferred by looking at finished objects, a greatly relevant question has been systematically overlooked: how was bronze in fact made, and why? Explicitly or implicitly, explorations of this topic portray a gradual substitution of alloying techniques over a few millennia, from the presumed simplest technique to that considered the most advanced one. This picture is, to say the least, unrealistic, because it does not consider the influence of environmental, socio-economic, and performance factors in the decision-making processes of bronze making. In accepting it, we are also neglecting the agency of those who made bronze. Besides its appealing simplicity, two reasons have contributed to the endurance of this perspective. Firstly, we lack a systematic compilation of all the available data on the use of bronze alloying techniques in the past. This would allow reassessing the traditional view in the light of the recent acceleration of archaeological science research. Secondly, some core assumptions of the traditional narrative cannot be challenged while we lack an empirical understanding of the performance implications of alloying techniques. Against this background, this paper revises this deterministic narrative of technological development and discusses the derived implications. To this aim, Debunking Deterministic Narratives of Technological… Fig. 1  Tin bronze alloying techniques used in Antiquity (bronze scrap by JML; stannite and malachite by R.M. Lavinsky (CC-BY-SA-3.0); cassiterite by R. Bottrill (CC-BY-3.0); copper by J. Zander (CC-BYSA-3.0); tin (CC0-1.0) a critical literature review and a series of alloying experiments that identified performance differences between techniques are presented. The resulting observations from both approaches expose a remarkable knowledge gap in the prehistory of bronze alloying technology development that opens new paths of enquiry on contextually explaining alloying technique choices over time. It is argued that this unexplored research field can lead to a re-evaluation of current models of bronze production organisation in Europe and beyond. The Accepted Narrative vs the Archaeological Evidence The Accepted Narrative on Tin Bronze Alloying Development Bronze is an alloy of copper (Cu) and tin (Sn). Although other Cu alloys have been documented, bronze is an important metal used for both utilitarian and symbolic artefacts in much of the world since the Bronze Age (~3rd–1st millennium BC depending on the area). Besides recycling, four techniques were used to produce bronze in Antiquity (Fig. 1): natural alloying, co-smelting, cementation, a (...truncated)