Dani János - Hajdú Zsigmond - Nagy Emese Gyöngyvér szerk.: MÓMOSZ I. (Debrecen, 2001)

Szabó Géza: Újabb eredmények és módszerek a Kárpát-medence késő bronzkori tárgyainak archaeometallurgiai vizsgálataiban

NEW RESULTS AND METHODS IN THE ARCHEAOJMETALLURGICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE LBA OBJECTS IN THE CARPATHIAN BASIN Archaeological metallurgical studies on objects from Late Bronze Age Studies of the Urnfield Cultures resulted in many reports dealing with the tool set and products of metal processing, and general problems of the production of bronze articles, basically from historical, typological points of view. Less opportunity has been and less attention were paid, however, to the study and evaluation of bronze articles on interdisciplinary background. The present paper is aimed at approaching the subject from this less studied aspect.

1 In reported work beside the studies of the object of late Bronze Age characterised to some extent as individual, e.g. the belt disc coming from the north, or helmets, pots and rings that may be attributed to particular class, the bronze articles of RegölyVeravár representing mainly the generalities, has been studied in detail. Complex and specially detailed analysis of this treasure find containing strongly varied articles from the aspect of both manufacture and use gives opportunity to control the research results accumulated so far, and due to the use of most up-to-date methods give basis to outline the technical and technological knowledge of metal processing in the Late Bronze Age. In addition to the existing research results, the new methods used scarcely or not et all, in the Central European archaeological practice, offer further means to the use of earlier data, too. For instance, during the investigation of the material not only the composition (in percentage) but also the microstructure, the type of the appliances, the way of their use, etc. were assessed together, and the solutions guessed on the basis of observations, were modelled in a foundry workshop, moreover they were tested in the experimental archaeological camps under conditions essentially analogous to the original ones.

2 For demonstrating the serviceability of articles, in addition to the practical tests, hardness studies also were performed firstly in the domestic practice of Bronze Age studies.

3 One of the basic problems of Bronze Age metal processing is the kind and place of origin of the base metal, and the way of obtaining it. It is not yet cleared up that where and who the bronze articles had been manufactured and how they arrived to the end users. Additional problem is the high tin content revealed in the investigations of last decades considerably exceeding the European average, and this fact rendered more difficult to integrate the domestic data into the international system of archaeometallurgical researches. The possibilities of metal processing of late Bronze Age were strongly limited by the natural environment, the places of occurrence, and the metallurgical properties of the processed metal, i.e. the bronze, what is, sorry to say, often neglected in the practice of archaeological researches. Phenomena observed during the complex study of treasure find of Regöly-Veravár

4 containing strongly varied articles from the aspect of both manufacture and use, offer an opportunity to more realistic evaluation of the existing measurement results, and for outlining on interdisciplinary basis the technical and technological knowledge of Urnfield Culture, its raw material supply and its structure.

5 Studied articles of the finds at Regöl-Veravár on the base of polished surface analysis are the following: I. Cast articles - sand cast articles - chill cast articles - ingots II. Cast and cold-worked articles III. Worked, annealed articles - cold-worked annealed articles - annealed after cold-working articles I. CAST ARTICLES In most cases of the objects observed also with microscope, the original cast structure could be revealed, but the microstructure remained intact during the processing only in a part of cases.

6 The original cast texture could be observed also in the