Megalithic shipping and trade routes

[Boreades]

Sorry, forget that last line:

How are they smelting all that ore?

We learnt a while ago from the Cornish Tin trade that it was more economic to move the ore to where the fuel supply is. Because you need about 10x the quantity of coal to ore. Which is why the metal foundries were in South Wales and not in Cornwall.

I should have asked : where would you move the ore to?

[TisILeclerc]

I thought they used charcoal for preference.

Too many impurities in coal. And it's easier to chop a forest down if there's one there.

[Boreades]

Ah, a neuron-bump moment.

Irish peat bogs, just like Dartmoor and Bodmin moor peat bogs. All that was left.

Is there much evidence in Ireland of ancient forests before the mining started?

[Boreades]

I thought they used charcoal for preference.

Too many impurities in coal. And it's easier to chop a forest down if there's one there.

By the early 1700s, the iron industry was much reduced in Ireland, primarily due to the exhaustion of timber supplies, that were used in the production of charcoal for smelting.

http://www.mineralsireland.ie/Mining+in ... Mining.htm

[TisILeclerc]

The man from wiki says yes.

'Upon the first arrival of humans in Ireland around 9,000 years ago, the entire island was predominantly covered in a blanket of thick woodland. These woodlands consisted largely of Oak and Pine forests. However, centuries of heavy deforestation meant that by the end of the 19th century the area of woodland and forest cover in Ireland was estimated to be approximately 69,000 hectares, or 1% of the national land area.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_f ... in_Ireland

I would imagine Ireland would be as forested as other countries after the ice age. What happened next would depend on the activities of people and other animals.

[Boreades]

What can we say about the volume of gold?

This said one thing:

Cornwall was scene of prehistoric gold rush, says new research.

New archaeological research is revealing that south-west Britain was the scene of a prehistoric gold rush. A detailed analysis of some of Western Europe’s most beautiful gold artefacts suggests that Cornwall was a miniature Klondyke in the Early Bronze Age. Geological estimates now indicate that up to 200 kilos of gold, worth in modern terms almost £5 million, was extracted in the Early Bronze Age from Cornwall and West Devon’s rivers – mainly between the 22nd and 17th centuries BC.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/scien ... 98343.html

But this..

The late 18th century also witnessed a local gold rush in Co. Wicklow. For six weeks in 1795, some 80kg of alluvial gold is estimated to have been recovered from what subsequently became known as the Gold Mines River. Following State intervention and dispersal of the gold diggers, mining was subsequently carried out by the Government (1796-1803), by the local populace (1804-39), and by a private company (1860). The total amount of gold recovered is calculated at some 300kg, although the true figure may be much higher.

..suggests something else.

http://www.mineralsireland.ie/Mining+in ... Mining.htm

Without confusing the two locations, it seems to me that there was a lot more gold being produced than we might expect. But that might just be part of the folk lore of all "rare" things ... it's only rare when people think it's rare.

For an understanding of that, you will have to research the distinction between "known resources" and "reserves". This confusion often surfaces in the MSM when we get scare stories about "we only have X years reserves of Z left". This is while "reserves" are actually the stockpiled extracted and refined products, while 100's or 1,000's of X years are still in the ground as known but untapped resources.

[TisILeclerc]

Borry, your link to the Independent gives this nugget of information:

'As the Bronze Age progressed, large quantities of tin were also exported to the great North Welsh copper mining area near Llandudno where it was used to make even greater quantities of bronze, especially bronze axes to help clear thousands of square miles of British forests to create more land for agriculture.'

Which answers our previous question 'did they smelt ore at that location?'

Which means that it's quite possible that the Vikings called the area Orme because of the smelting activity as well as a possible reference to the shape of the headland.

So, were the Vikings and their forebears trading with north Wales for bronze?

[Boreades]

Yes, good spot.

Nowadays (post-1709), we're accustomed to smelting furnaces being in one place, like Coalbrookdale, Sheffield, Port Talbot etc.

Nice animation of a furness in action:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactiv ... mbed.shtml

IIRC, in a previous post far back in TME forum-time, I was pulling Mick's leg about rolling logs downhills, or floating them downstream for smelting ore. But charcoal-powered smelting was more of a cottage industry(?), which would have to be fairly mobile, trying to minimise the distances involved between the sources of ores and the then-available charcoal.

So besides the mining and ore business, there must have been another big supply-chain involved in (a) felling woodland timber, (b) wood-burning to make charcoal and (c) the movement of charcoal.

This is typically the kind of non-glamorous humdrum "trade" history that the ortho-historians don't find sexy enough to excite them. Doing the same kind of thing, day in and day out for thousands of years, with no sign of wars to break the monotony. And there's just not enough high-cast ritual involved! But it's food and drink to megalithic folk like us.

[TisILeclerc]

If you want 'glamorous and sexy' send them to Redcar they'd love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWgsINl8SWw

Mind you that's a bit too modern. I would imagine the Vikings would be impressed and maybe think twice of landing.

But the more user friendly approach of our ancestors would perhaps have been intriguing rather than frightening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uHc4Hirexc

Modern day prehistoric copper smelting in action. Here be dragons. They call themselves Ancient Arts or perhaps that should be Ancient Arthurs drawing the sword out of the stone?

And where do they do their stuff? Great Orme of course.

'In 1997, David Chapman of Ancient Arts identified eroding deposits on the Great Orme, Llandudno. These deposits contained fragments of charcoal, shells, bone and metal working debris in the form of small, prills of copper metal (less than 50mm in diameter) with adhering fragments of slag like material. The potential importance of this site was significant as it is located just over one kilometre from the remains of the most extensive Bronze Age copper mine known in the UK. At the time of its discovery and subsequently no associated smelting sites or settlement sites have been found on the Great Orme. Indeed, no Bronze Age smelting sites have been positively identified in the UK.'

http://www.ancient-arts.org/pentrwyn%20exp%20report.pdf

The report is worth reading as it details the excavations and gives an analysis of the finds in relation to smelting activity as well as showing them reconstructing a furnace using the possible materials originally used.

http://www.ancient-arts.org/

[Boreades]

An excellent video!

For those a long way south of Anglesey, one can also see bronze-age methods in action at the Levant Mine in Cornwall.

Bronze Age Smelting at Levant Mine.
https://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/news/ ... evant-mine

This is run by Neil Burridge, who also has this excellent website on Bronze Age Craft and metal working
http://www.bronze-age-craft.com/

In his intro
http://www.bronze-age-craft.com/intro.htm
he makes a very practical point that

"It is impossible to see the colour of the flames in daylight, and one wonders if they would have done all metalworking under cover in darkness or at night."

- fire at night reinforces our Dragon Master ideas.

I hadn't fully appreciated that known Irish axes are all copper, and older than British bronze axes. He says :

(bronze) first appears in a group of metalwork called Brithdir 2150 BC in Wales, this is strange because all tin and a plentiful supplies of copper are available in Cornwall and some in Devon,

Why is it strange?