Ground stone in a metallic world

Supervisors:

Dr Rachel Crellin rjc65@le.ac.uk
Professor Oliver Harris
Professor Huw Barton

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. This PhD forms an essential component of the project by adding a new understanding of the role of stone in the Bronze Age.

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. 

This PhD will develop an overall understanding of stone use in the Bronze Age in Britain and Ireland by studying existing published and grey literature. They may also choose to bring in experimental archaeology to help increase our understanding of the role that stone tools play in metalworking in particular. The applicant will develop their research through a series of case studies that could include looking at groundstone from burial sites, houses, or mining sites or studies focusing on particular categories of objects. Throughout the PhD the analysis will be informed by a thorough engagement with archaeological theory, in particular new materialist approaches to objects and their role in the production of past worlds.