Arsenical bronze
Bronce arsenical (aleación cobre-arsénico)
- Date
- c. 3600 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Arslantepe, Malatya, Turkey; the Caucasus (Maikop) and Iran
- Credited to
- Chalcolithic societies of eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and Iran
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Smelting of arsenic-rich copper ores (or deliberate addition) producing a harder metal that flows better in the mould and has a silvery colour. The first alloy, forerunner of tin bronze.
Whether the arsenic was added deliberately or came from the ore is debated; it appears at several centres between the 5th and 4th millennium (Iran, the Caucasus, the Levant, Anatolia).
What it led to
- Functional metal weapons and tools, not merely prestige items
- Chronic poisoning of smelters from arsenic fumes (the myth of the lame smith)
- The search for ores and alloys that led to tin and to long-distance trade