Mediterranean-style rock art depictions of bulls and ships, dating to 1600-1400 BCE, from western Sweden. SHFA: Gerhard Milstreu Vast
Posted on 05/12/2016 8:35:00 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Bronze tools found in Sweden dating from 3,600 years ago were made using copper from the Mediterranean, archaeologists have shown. They now also believe that rock carvings of ships found in Bohuslan, Sweden were visual documentation of trade between ancient Scandinavia and the Mediterranean.
Most of the copper circulating in Bronze Age Europe apparently originated from Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian peninsula - and Cyprus, going by isotope analysis...
The precious copper was exchanged for Nordic amber, which was as cherished as gold in Mycenaean Greece and in the prehistoric Middle East...
The ancient Cypriot copper industry produced relatively pure stuff, which was smelted into "oxhide ingots"... Bronze Age copper slabs that looked like nothing so much as stretched hides, with four extruding corners that were used to carry them... about 37 kilos each.
Vast quantities of ingots have been found in Cyprus, Sardinia, mainland Greece and Crete. The biggest collection was found in the "Uluburun shipwreck," that sank in the late 14th century BCE off Turkey. Underwater excavation shows that the ship carried 10 tons of ingots, all of which seem to have originated in Cyprus...
Isotope analysis of some 70 bronze daggers and axes from Bronze Age Sweden by scientists from Sweden's University of Gothenburg, headed by Dr. Johan Ling, proved that at least some originated in Cypriot copper mines. Most probably, it was traded for amber.
"Bronze was as valuable a raw material as oil is today," says Prof. Kristian Kristiansen of the University of Gothenburg´s archaeological department. It and amber were the twin engines of the Bronze Age economy, to the extent that marriage alliances are believed to have been forged between powerful families in ancient Europe in order to secure the amber trade.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
Mediterranean-style rock art depictions of bulls and ships, dating to 1600-1400 BCE, from western Sweden. SHFA: Gerhard Milstreu Vast
By way of comparison, the Peterborough Petroglyphs in Canada...
The this article suggests the Mycenaeans traded directly in fleets. The past theory was there was localized trade networks that passed trade goods middle man to middle man rather than direct shipping.
Interesting.
Evil Fair Traitors were making excess profits off the common man even back then!
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/uluburun/index
Archaeologists find Bronze Age shipwreck off Turkey’s southwest [2/3/2016]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3392132/posts
:’)
“In any case... Ling thinks... that Cypriot copper was not massively and purposefully imported... but trickled along the Bronze Age trade routes.”
And now the archaeologists think they have recognized images of the ships that brought the copper north. Thousands of elaborate rock carvings dating to the Bronze Age have been found in Scandinavia, mostly in the region of Bohuslän, on the Swedish west coast. A recurring motif on the rock carvings is ships – and intriguingly, most of these ship carving sites also have images that resemble Mediterranean oxhide ingots. Thousands of images attest to a massive direct presence over a sustained time. Kaul Flemming, a researcher from the Danish national museum who studies beads in Danish Bronze Age burials, is convinced that there was a cultural transfer between the Aegean and Scandinavia. “The motifs from the Kivik grave may well been taken from Mycenean Greece,” he tells Haaretz, adding, “The chariots, the light two-wheeled cart, can also be seen on the Mycenaean grave steles.” A cultural transfer denoted direct and sustained contact and not a trickle of trade done with localized, what I call "fire bucket brigade" like transfers of trade goods between local middle men who did not travel far.
And now the archaeologists think they have recognized images of the ships that brought the copper north. Thousands of elaborate rock carvings dating to the Bronze Age have been found in Scandinavia, mostly in the region of Bohuslän, on the Swedish west coast. A recurring motif on the rock carvings is ships – and intriguingly, most of these ship carving sites also have images that resemble Mediterranean oxhide ingots.
Thousands of images attest to a massive direct presence over a sustained time.
Kaul Flemming, a researcher from the Danish national museum who studies beads in Danish Bronze Age burials, is convinced that there was a cultural transfer between the Aegean and Scandinavia. “The motifs from the Kivik grave may well been taken from Mycenean Greece,” he tells Haaretz, adding, “The chariots, the light two-wheeled cart, can also be seen on the Mycenaean grave steles.”
A cultural transfer denoted direct and sustained contact and not a trickle of trade done with localized, what I call "fire bucket brigade" like transfers of trade goods between local middle men who did not travel far.
Thank you for the link. My brother will check out Gransfors on his visit to Sweden.
An ax like your photo appeared on Antiques Roadshow last week and the appraiser said it was made around 1650, used in the kitchen, and used with a hammer since it has a blunt head, probably to butcher meat.
Sloane, donated his incredible tool collection for a museum, preserved by Stanley Tools, in Kent, Connecticut. This little museum is worth a trip from anywhere.
http://www.ericsloane.com/museum.htm
http://www.alibris.com/search/books/author/Eric-Sloane
I love the fact that each Gransfors smith signs his work; you can use a chart provided to find his full name. The handles are so amazing ...they feel as if there are custom made for you.
Yup. The Uluburun wreck isn’t as old as this though.
A few moons back I was trying to read up on some ancient naval battles and particularly on ramming. There seems to have been only a half dozen or so bronze rams ever found.
Certainly old rams would have been recycled from scrapped ships and damaged and old units melted down for new ones but with such a large number of ancient warships we should have more.
I’ve never heard of anyone actually searching at Salamis, Actium, Aegates or any other old battle site for sunken goodies like shields, armor, weapons, ship fittings, cauldrons and above all rams since they would be the easiest things to locate.
I wish I was a billionaire like Paul Allen.
:<{
Very interesting, thank you for a great post. Can I be put on the list for such articles? My view was that during the Bronze age the quest for rare tin maybe allowed for world exploration and maybe the bronze age people explored the world, including the Americas. That made sense to me because there was a financial reason to explore.
Beu when iron replaced bronze the market for bronze collapsed and there was no more need to explore or circumnavigate the globe. Over time this world knowledge - which was secret to begin with because it was a trade secret passed down father to son probably - was forgotten.
At Petroglyphs Provincial Park you see one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in North America, and a few look an awful lot like a Viking vessels!
http://www.canadacool.com/location/petroglyphs-provincial-park/
The origin of Mythical Ships
http://www.native-science.net/Ship.Mythical.htm
Swedish petroglyphs — looks like Viking-era ships to me:
http://www.visitsweden.com/ImageVault/Images/id_375/conversionFormat_13/scope_0/conversionFormatType_Jpeg/ImageVaultHandler.aspx
Somewhere on FR there was a topic (circa 2005? 2006?) regarding some armor that were apparently from Actium; I remember it, but a search a few years ago didn’t turn it up. A bronze ram I believe has been found on the sea floor.
Likeliest place to find bronze rams would be on a wreck carrying salvage — they recycled metals just as we do today. As you said, a bronze ram would be reused if possible.
According to the late Lionel Casson, there was an arms race of sorts during Classical Greek / Hellenistic times, with larger and larger warships, to the point that the pinnacle development was too large ever to be used. The Romans conquered Greece, liked the ship (still tied to the dock where it entered service), and towed it to Rome, where it became a tourist attraction.
The upshot is, when warships with rams got replaced, they were replaced by a larger version, and the bronze rams would have been newly built to fit, psssibly reusing previous rams by melting them down (not sure that works with classical bronze).
I’ll add you to the ping list, if nothing gets pinged in the next couple of days (really, in the next 8 hours), send me a private message as a reminder, or even do it now, I’ll see it right away when I’m back where I keep the list. :’)
I’d love it if the massive copper deposits of the far north of Michigan turned out to have been exploited by ancient “Old World” groups, but I don’t find that compelling. If there were an ancient wreck, that would be great; I’m not sure those currently wreck-mapping and such would notice something that anomalous. I could understand how the copper might have made it to the “Old World” via middlemen, that’s how it reached Central and South America.
Another obstacle is the waterway — there’s at least two places which would require portaging, or moving cargo from ship to carts, carts back to ships, again, middlemen.
I think reason the Phoenicians and Mycenaeans were credited with Stonehenge (for example) is that they were newly of interest perhaps 120 years ago, when there was a revival of interest in PreColumbian antiquities, while there was barely any study of or awareness of city-building by the ancestors of the locals. Now that the Mayan text is being read, there’s been an uptick in interest in Mayan stuff, and perhaps that’s why there’s a claim out there that the Mayans had colonized in at least one place in North America.
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