Local practices and global processes: Cornwall in the Bronze Age world

Abstract

Helle Vandkilde has challenged us to reimagine the European Bronze Age as a supra-regional phenomenon that can best be understood through the context of globalisation. The flow of metal in particular links distant people and regions, shaping social ties and economic systems throughout the 2nd and into the 1st millennium BCE. But archaeological inquiry often takes place on a much smaller scale. Just as local and global are in tension in modern globalisation models, so they are in our attempts to reconstruct past worlds. This present contribution looks back and forth between Vandkilde’s continental scale and the evidence for Bronze Age lives in Cornwall. Cornwall, today the somewhat sleepy and deeply peripheral southwest corner of Britain, is rich in ore and played an important role in the earliest western European metallurgical networks. Yet, the Cornish archaeological record remains deeply local, with longstanding traditions and unique practices well documented. This chapter seeks a preliminary answer to the question: is bronze really the best lens through which to study the people and practices of the 2nd millennium BCE?. Show more