Tin from Uluburun shipwreck shows small-scale commodity exchange fueled continental tin supply across Late Bronze Age Eurasia

Abstract

This paper provides the first comprehensive sourcing analysis of the tin ingots carried by the well-known Late Bronze Age shipwreck found off the Turkish coast at Uluburun (ca. 1320 BCE). Using lead isotope, trace element, and tin isotope analyses, this study demonstrates that ores from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were used to produce one-third of the Uluburun tin ingots. The remaining two-thirds were derived from the Taurus Mountains of Turkey, namely, from stream tin and residual low-grade mineralization remaining after extensive exploitation in the Early Bronze Age. The results of our metallurgical analysis, along with archaeological and textual data, illustrate that a culturally diverse, multiregional, and multivector system underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age. The demonstrable scale of this connectivity reveals a vast and disparate network that relied as much on the participation of small regional communities as on supposedly hegemonic institutions of large, centralized states.

Postglacial genomes from foragers across Northern Eurasia reveal prehistoric mobility associated with the spread of the Uralic and Yeniseian languages

“…Also remarkable is the prevalence at ST sites of ancestry from multiple foraging populations across Northern Eurasia, from the Cis-Baikal to as far West as the Baltic Sea. This highlights the involvement of populations with a foraging mode of subsistence in this network, in line with recent work highlighting the wide and culturally transformative reach of metal exchange networks in the Bronze Age 79–81 , as well as the oft-neglected sociopolitical dynamism and economic complexity found across hunter-gatherer populations 82 .…”

A pair of Chinese Shang oracle graphs Niu and Yang for certain livestock originate from the Neolithic Fertile Crescent

“…Tin ingots among the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck are sourced from nearby Taurus Mountains and distant Central Asia. This discovery along with other related archaeological and textual data reveals the trade networks from ancient Turkey, via Fertile Crescent to Central Asia, even stretched to Altai Mountains (Powell W. et al, 2022). Two trade and exchange routes from Central Asia to the middle Yellow River region are revealed by taurine cattle and sheep dispersal (Cai D. et al, 2014b(Cai D. et al, , 2016(Cai D. et al, , 2018aZhang N. et al, 2023aZhang N. et al, , 2023bBrunson et al, 2023).…”

The dahliagram: An interdisciplinary tool for investigation, visualization, and communication of past human-environmental interaction

“…had engineered ecologically well-adapted, multispecies (agro-)pastoralist subsistence strategies ( 68 ) and honed their mobility patterns to exploit both steppe and mountain ecologies ( 69 , 70 ). This era was also heavily influenced by the growth of large-scale trade networks ( 71 – 73 ), which was not a predominant stimulus for the earlier Yamnaya migration. Widespread growth and transfer of technological innovation such as tin-bronze metallurgy, horse riding, and grain farming each played a heightened role on mobility as they drew communities into regional arenas of trade and exchange, and facilitated forays into novel environments ( 74 , 75 ).…”