The Bronze Age is one period of the European Protohistoire characterized by the use of the Métallurgie of the Bronze, name generic of the Alliages of copper and tin. The invention of the concept of “Bronze Age” is due to the Danish researcher C.J. Thomsen which had in 1816 the intuition of successive employment by the humanity of the stone, bronze and iron, whereas it was to classify the national antiquities. Today, it is allowed that this period succeeds the Âge of copper or Chalcolithique and precedes the Âge by Iron. By convention, it is allowed that the Bronze Age covers one period ranging between -2500 with -1000. However, as for the other periods of prehistory, the chronological limits of the Bronze Age vary considerably according to the cultural surface and the geographical surface considered.
In France
In the south of the France, the Bronze Age begins it there has 4000 years, when the country communities integrate a movement of European unification, and lasts until worms -800, whereas social upheavals come from the East bring the rise to power of a warlike aristocracy. The production of tools and other objects out of bronze makes it possible to the archeologists to individualize the human groups of then, beside the remainder of the material Culture (primarily constituted by the Céramique S). The production out of bronze also makes it possible to establish chronologies and delimitations of populations, in the absence of other indices.In France, the first tests on the Bronze Age date from the 19th century. The Manuel of prehistoric archeology, Celtic and Gallo-Roman of Joseph Déchelette appeared in 1910 constituted a long time the reference for the study of this period. In 1955, J.J. Hatt joined in the Bulletin of the French prehistoric Company work of two authors German and English (W. Kimmig and N.K. Sandars). Their last talk proposed a division of the Bronze Age in three parts (the chronological limits are given only as an indication with the France for reference):
- old Bronze: /with;
- average Bronze: /with;
- final Bronze: /with /huitieme century BC
In the world
The Bronze Age is well-known- for the continental Europe (e.g. the Danish Bronze Age),
- in the Aegean world, with the the Middle East,
- as in China where it coincides with the Dynastie Shang,
- and in Southeast Asia, where one finds the culture of Dong His, named according to the village éponyme in the north of the Vietnam, which goes back to the
It is more difficult to identify in certain areas of the world, such as the Latin America where the Civilizations précolombiennes knew a Métallurgie Or and Cuivre until the Spanish conquest.
Environment with the Bronze Age
The significant development of the industry of extraction and refinement and of the metallurgy of copper and bronze had important consequences on the Environnement and the human Santé, in particular by contaminating water, the air and the food by copper, lead, cadmium present in the vapors of the casting or smelters of the ore, or lost by the “sterile” (waste) of the mines. At the end of the Bronze Age, it seems that one voluntarily sometimes added Plomb to the tin.Les tools of bronze (hâches in particular) was sources of important progress but also retreats of the forest (thanks to the axes, and to supply the furnaces) and of a very significant Pollution of the Environnement which one starts retrospectively to be able to measure thanks to the analysis of Os and of Dent S of prehistoric men having lived near the mines (for example on archeological sites of current the Jordan).
Ainsi of the men of prehistory having lived in the first mining zones of current Jordan was victims of Saturnisme and a strong increase in the rates Os seux of copper. One measured human and animal contaminations very high as of the Bronze Age in this area.
Social changes
Bronze seems to have played a part comparable with that which with played more tardily the Or, namely to be an economic exchange and investment security which one can thésauriser, to exchange and recycle, with the disadvantage of becoming a source of competitions, flights and other conflicts. It probably contributed to the development of the craft industry and a hierarchisation of the prehistoric companies, proposing the armed warrior and his chief. The archelogy puts regularly up to date deposits which can have a value nuns or pertaining to worship or simple forgotten hiding places, signs of insecurity and social instability.
See too
To see (Bibliography)
- Catalog of the exposure " Before the Celts, Europe with the Bronze Age, 2500 - 800 before J.C.". Daoulas, p.66 - 73. BRIARD J., the GOFFIC Mr. (1988)
- Large Atlas of Archeology (it), Encyclopedia Universalis, Paris, 1985.
- J. Briard, Bronze Age in Europe 2000-800 before J. - C., Wandering, Paris, 1985.
- Guilaine Jean, Prehistory from one continent to another (la), Larousse, Paris, 1986.
External bonds
- Article on fishing with the Bronze Age
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