Tin is an essential but scarce component of bronze, which was used extensively by the major Bronze Age civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Tin mined by Britain’s small farming communities across Cornwall and Devon likely played an important role in the wider Bronze Age world.
Under the title ‘From Land’s End to the Levant: did Britain’s tin sources transform the Bronze Age in Europe and the Mediterranean?’, the specialist journal ANTIQUITY published the research results on 7 May 2025. Daniel Berger, research associate at CEZA in Mannheim, was involved in the research and the publication.
South-west England one of the main sources of tin for bronze production
Archaeologists have analysed tin ores and artefacts from across Europe and in Mediterranean shipwrecks, revealing that south-west Britain was a major source of tin for bronze production, including that of the major Bronze Age civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean. Full-tin bronze was a key innovation of ancient societies. By alloying copper with around 10 per cent tin, they produced a harder, easier to cast and more golden-coloured metal.
Several major Bronze Age civilisations of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East used bronze extensively, in weapons, tools and jewellery art. However, little is known about where they obtained the tin to produce it. Whilst copper is fairly common across Eurasia, tin can only be sourced from a select few locations. The richest and most-accessible tin ores in Europe are found in Cornwall and Devon in south-west Britain.
“Where did the tin that supplied Bronze Age societies across Europe and the Mediterranean come from?” asks co-author of the research, Dr Alan Williams from Durham University. “There has never been a major research project until now that has scientifically analysed the tin ores and tin artefacts in south-west Britain as well as the tin deposits in Western and Central Europe”. To identify the sources of the tin, researchers from several European institutions performed trace element, lead isotope and tin isotope analysis of tin ores, artefacts and deposits from across Europe and shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
Earlier assumptions about the origin of tin confirmed
Whilst previous studies have analysed tin isotopes suggesting a European tin source, conclusive evidence for a British source was lacking. By combining these three techniques for the first time, the researchers were able to clearly provenance the tin to Cornwall and Devon.
Comparing the results with tin ingots from three c. 1300BC shipwrecks off the coast of Israel, and a later one off Mediterranean France, revealed the tin in the shipwrecks originated from south-west Britain. “I am pleased to see that our further research has now finally confirmed our earlier hypothesis from 2019 regarding a British tin provenance,” says Dr Daniel Berger from CEZA Mannheim, Germany, co-author of the study. “Such successes are rare.”
“This means that tin mined by small farming communities in Cornwall and Devon around 3300 years ago was being traded to ancient kingdoms and states in the East Mediterranean over 4000 km away”, says co-author Dr Benjamin Roberts from Durham University. “This is the first commodity to be exported across the entire continent in British history.”
We know of over 100 copper mines across Bronze Age Europe. If this copper was being matched by around 10 per cent tin, up to 200 tons of tin were being traded hundreds of kilometres across Europe and western Asia each year. The majority of this tin may have come from south-west Britain, having significant implications for our understanding of Britain’s role in the wider Bronze Age world.
“The identification of this trade network which is likely to have involved tons of tin being moved annually across the continent radically transforms our understanding of Britain’s social and economic relationships with the far larger and more complex societies in the distant past”, Dr Roberts concludes. “The volume, consistency and frequency of the estimated scale in the tin trade is far larger than has been imagined and requires an entirely new perspective on what Bronze Age miners and merchants were able to achieve”.
You can find the full article in Antiquity here.