Se presenta el primer análisis composicional, morfológico y contextual de objetos metálicos de la Puna Meridional argentina (1430-2070 aP) para contribuir al conocimiento de la metalurgia centro-surandina del cobre, desde un espacio marginal a los principales centros productivos relacionados con esta tecnología. Mediante microscopia electrónica de barrido y análisis de energía dispersiva de rayos X (MEB-EDS) se identifican cobres sin alear y aleaciones de cobre-arsénico y de plomo-arsénico, con una variedad de elementos minoritarios que corresponderían a distintas menas y, potencialmente, distintos lugares de producción en los Andes centro sur. El metal habría circulado a largas distancias en distintos trayectos en el marco de las redes sociales que vincularon ámbitos a diferentes alturas en ambas vertientes andinas. La Puna Meridional constituiría un nodo en esta circulación durante el período Medio. Allí el metal se integró a rituales domésticos del grupo corresidente de fundación, de clausura y referidos al ciclo anual agropastoril, mediante los cuales se propiciarían sus animales domésticos y se reclamaría el territorio.

The site of L’anse de la République, Talmont-Saint-Hilaire, Vendée, France, belonging to the Beaker culture, was discovered by Roger Joussaume in the 1960s. It was subsequently investigated during the late 1980s and more recently in 2014. Several items excavated during these operations are clearly linked to metallurgy. This article assesses the results of new analyses (XRF, petrographic analysis, metallographic microscope observation, SEM and EDS microprobe analysis) undertaken on the different artefacts (copper residue, slags, smelting-crucible sherds), which allow the authors to assert that copper ore was smelted on the site. Radiocarbon dating of organic residue preserved on a ceramic sherd confirms the dating of the site to the earliest phase of the Beaker culture (2500 bc). The metallic copper produced here is characterised by two main impurities: arsenic and nickel. This provides an opportunity to review the extremely rare vestiges of Beaker metallurgy in France, which contrast with the numerous metal objects recovered. This article also considers the use of domestic smelting vessels for smelting ore; this technique may have been more widespread than previously thought in the Beaker culture on the Atlantic coast of Europe.

Precision radiocarbon dating continues to bring historical order into key moments of social and economic change, such as the use of metals. Here the author dates human bone in graves with metal artefacts and shows that copper, antimony and silver were being fashioned into daggers and beads in west central Italy by the early to mid fourth millennium cal BC; but the new-fangled objects had not reached contemporary cemeteries on the other side of the Apennines. We can perhaps look forward to a time when the arrival of metallurgy in Europe is neither diffusionary nor piecemeal, but the result of real historical events and social contacts, mapped for us by radiocarbon.