As a part of the analysis challenge Metals & Giants, a world crew of students has supplied new insights into the Bronze Age steel commerce.
Throughout the Bronze Age, the Nuraghe tradition thrived in Sardinia. It’s best recognized for its tower-like stone buildings, known as nuraghers, and for the small bronze collectible figurines often called bronzetti, which incessantly painting warriors, deities, and animals. These artifacts have lengthy intrigued researchers, but the exact origins of their steel remained unsure.
To find out the place the copper used within the bronzetti got here from, the analysis crew utilized a scientific approach often called a multi-proxy method (a technique combining a number of chemical analyses). By inspecting isotopes of copper, tin, lead, and the much less widespread ingredient osmium, they had been capable of construct a extra correct image of the metals’ sources. This method, created on the Curt-Engelhorn Middle for Archaeometry in Mannheim, has lastly supplied solutions to a query that has challenged students for years.
“The outcomes present that bronzetti was primarily produced from copper from Sardinia, typically blended with copper from the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal). The examine additionally revealed that copper from the Levant – locations like Timna in Israel and Faynan in Jordan – was not utilized in Sardinia, which was solely made clear by osmium isotopes,” says first creator Daniel Berger from the Curt-Engelhorn Middle for Archaeometry, who developed the brand new methodology, carried out the analyses, and supplied the fundamental interpretation.
Collaboration between pure science and archaeology
Daniel Berger highlights how the brand new isotope evaluation methodology affords a exact option to decide the geographic sources of copper, whereas Helle Vandkilde stresses the significance of mixing pure science with archaeology.
“Archaeological strategies set up a powerful basis that the newest scientific strategies can refine and clarify. This may carry previous discussions to an finish. In our case, the very newest geochemical data factors to the origin of the steel in particular geographical areas and sure mines. It is usually potential in a number of instances to hint a strategic mixture of copper with completely different origins; Presumably to attain sure results such because the product’s colour and power,” says Professor Helle Vandkilde from Aarhus University.
The team also studied three of the largest Nuraghian shrines, all of which produced bronzetti, and found that the metals used at these sites were nearly identical. This consistency suggests that the manufacture of bronzetti followed a shared tradition across Sardinia.
Interestingly, the researchers note that although Sardinia has its own deposits of tin and lead, these were not used in the figurines. The tin needed to create bronze must have been brought in from outside the island, most likely from the Iberian Peninsula, as indicated by the isotopic signatures in the bronzetti and the chemical composition of Sardinian tin artifacts.
“Having the opportunity to analyse the famous bronze figures from Sardinia is an important step towards understanding how the island has been a central piece of the metal trade during the Bronze Age. The shape and execution of the figures fit into the material culture of the period, and yet they contain stylistic features that feel amazingly familiar to us in southern Scandinavia. We only have to think of the Viksø helmets or the warriors on our petroglyphs wearing helmets adorned with horns. With new knowledge about where the metal for these figures came from, we are now one step closer to mapping the connections between Sardinia and Scandinavia,” says Associate Professor at Moesgaard Heide Wrobel Nørgaard.
A Nordic connection
Field studies in collaboration between Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum have demonstrated hitherto unknown connections between Sardinia and the Nordic countries in the Bronze Age 1000-800 BC.
Iconic horned helmets, which we know from Viksø, Kallerup, Grevensvænge, and Tanum, also appear in Sardinia, both in miniature and giant formats. In both places, these unique horn-helmeted figures are found.
Reference: “Multiproxy analysis unwraps origin and fabrication biographies of Sardinian figurines: On the trail of metal-driven interaction and mixing practices in the early first millennium BCE” by Daniel Berger, Valentina Matta, Nicola Ialongo, Heide W. Nørgaard, Gianfranca Salis, Michael Brauns, Mads K. Holst and Helle Vandkilde, 10 September 2025, PLOS ONE.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0328268
The project ‘Metals & Giants’ is supported by the Augustinus Foundation.
First author: Daniel Berger (Curt-Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry), has developed the new method for determining the origin of copper, performed the analyses and was responsible for the basic interpretation.
Additional archaeological research contributions come from Aarhus University (Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies) and Moesgaard represented by Professor Helle Vandkilde, Associate Professor Heide Wrobel Nørgaard and Postdoc Nicola Ialongo.
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