Tin ingots mined in Cornwall 1300 BCE
One open question about the Bronze Age in the Middle East was where the tin was sourced. Bronze is an alloy of primarily copper and tin. Recently, scientists identified the surprising source of tin ingots found in three shipwrecks off the coast of Isreal. Based on metallurgic data, they concluded that the tin most likely came from Cornwall and Devon in southwest England. The age of the shipwrecks suggests that it was mined around 1300 BCE. The discovery implies that Bronze Age maritime trade routes were longer and more complex than had previously been understood.
CNN quotes Dr. Ernst Pernicka, who was involved in the research, saying “Tin objects and deposits are rare in Europe and Asia. The Eastern Mediterranean region, where some of the objects we studied originated, had practically none of its own deposits. So the raw material in this region must have been imported.”
The study was published in the PLOS science journal by researchers from Heidelberg University and the Curt Engelhorn Centre for Archaeometry, Mannheim.
Bronze, 90 percent copper, 10 percent tin.
Where it came from is anyone’s guess.
The ancient bronze could have anywhere from 90/10 to 70/30 copper to tin. Really early bronze was copper and arsenic, which tended to also kill the people doing the smelting, so the moved onto tin.