The project forms one strand of the Leverhulme Funded Research Leadership Award, A New History of Bronze. This project explores how the emergence and use of copper and bronze metalworking in this period created new possibilities for crafting, leadership and violence. The emergence of metal casts stone under a shadow. The prestige material of earlier periods is often presented as second rate, somehow of less value than the newly emergent metals that seem to make the Bronze Age what it is. This view holds firm despite the evidence throughout the Bronze Age of the importance of stone in the form of flint tools, on the one hand, and a host of ground stone technologies on the other. Existing research has explored the role of battle axes, bracers and the relationship between copper-alloy and flint daggers. Specifically, between 2017 and 2021 the Leverhulme funded Beyond the Three Age System project began the process of challenging the way the divide between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age has led to the importance of stone being downplayed in the latter period. This PhD project will develop this by focusing on the use of groundstone, with the successful applicant exploring the different ways that this material formed a key part of Bronze Age life in Britain and Ireland. The range of material available is extensive and so elements for specific study will be selected early in the PhD. This could include stone moulds, mining tools, quern stones, stone hammers and anvils, bracers, grooved abraders, the re-use of much older heirloom stone tools and the stone tools that formed a key part of the metalworking process.
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