Influences of wood-crafting on technological development in Middle to Late Bronze Age Southern England

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between wood-crafting activity and technological development in metal tools during the Late-Middle and Late Bronze Age in Southern England. It suggests that a number of tool types and forms can be characterised as direct responses to specific crafting processes. The study further suggests that through analysis of those tools and crafting processes, the socio-technological relationships between craftspeople and materials can be better explored.

The thesis makes a case for the importance of wood-use during the British Bronze Age as a material key both to a range of craft activities and technological change. The discussion highlights the lack of a cohesive analysis of its use, potential and material relationships. It suggests that a semantic approach to craft practice can inform as to how those practices were facilitated, and that particular craft processes focussed on wood-use are manifested in surviving tools.

Four tool types are examined - socketed axes, gouges, chisels and saws; their morphology and structure are analysed to discern variations in function and structural trends which are suggestive of common approaches to production and use. The results of this analysis are linked to woodcrafting practices to highlight how particular forms of each tool type were targeted to activity.

The study concludes by arguing that Bronze Age tool forms, and their production, were the result of a complex network of social, technological and developmental influences. It finds that a number of forms were indeed targeted to specific wood-crafting tasks, and that tools ostensibly produced separately followed common structural trends which derived from those tasks. The study also concludes that certain tool forms such as saws manifest multi-material developmental origins, and that analysis based on crafting functions has the potential to provide a more cohesive perspective of Bronze Age tool development than has previously been developed.

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ORCID for Joanna Sofaer: orcid.org/0000-0001-6328-8636

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