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Content archived on 2024-06-18

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: context, function and choice of early metalworking tools on Europe’s Atlantic façade

Objective

The aim of this project is to achieve a better understanding of both the technological and the social dimensions of early metalworking in Western Europe, through a systematic study of the toolkit employed by Chalcolithic and Bronze Age craftspeople. The study will consider both physical (tool morphology, use wear, material properties) and contextual data (site type, chronology, association with other items), with the primary objectives of reconstructing the respective chaînes opératoires and of identifying inherent constraints and determinants in metalworkers’ technical decision making. The latter will also involve a systematic comparison between the types of rock chosen as raw material for lithic metalworking tools and raw-material selection for other lithic implements within their respective communities, to gain insights into the structure of metalworkers’ social networks.
The corpus of material to be included in this study comprises the vast majority of known percussive metalworking tools (hammers and anvils) from Western Europe, manufactured both from lithic materials (c 330 objects) and from copper-base alloys (c 180 objects). The study area includes the British Isles, France, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Benelux countries, with chronological coverage extending to the onset of the Iron Age in the early 1st millennium BC.
The project’s methodology builds on a novel approach developed by the fellow as part of her PhD work on lithic metalworking tools from France, but will also introduce a number of new approaches (lithics provenancing, network analysis), considerably expanding and diversifying the fellow’s skill base (artefact petrology, 3D scanning, database design), to ultimately allow her to attain a position of professional maturity at an international level. Planned project outcomes include a number of conference papers and a peer-reviewed journal paper, as well as an open-access database making the project data available to the wider scientific community

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Topic(s)

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Call for proposal

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FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IEF
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Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)

Coordinator

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST
EU contribution
€ 221 606,40
Address
UNIVERSITY ROAD LANYON BUILDING
BT7 1NN BELFAST
United Kingdom

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Region
Northern Ireland Northern Ireland Belfast
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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