How can we build a solid bridge between analytical and theoretical approaches to ancient metallurgy? Between quantitative data (e.g. lead or tin isotopes) and models of exchange? Between the circulation of commodities, the transmission of ideas, territoriality, and social complexity? These are the main questions addressed by Metals, Minds, and Mobility, which stems from a session held at the twenty-first EAA annual meeting in Glasgow. The volume collects twelve papers written by eminent scholars and research groups from five European countries: Germany, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Most of the chapters focus on the third to second millennium bc (with some deviations towards the fifth, fourth, and first) and the geographical context spans from Europe to the Near East, Mesopotamia, and, in one comparative case, Colombia. Although I acknowledge that it is impossible to cover everything, it is surprising that the Alps, the Central Mediterranean, and the Balkans are absent from the contributions, or only lightly touched upon. These are, after all, crucial hubs where metallurgy—in all its forms—supported the development of some of the earliest hierarchical societies in Europe. Far from seeing any malice in this editorial choice, I believe that readers would have benefitted from attention to these areas, as they offer a remarkable body of evidence and recent research achievements (e.g. Radivojević et al., Reference Radivojević, Roberts, Pernicka, Stos-Gale, Martinón-Torres and Rehren2018).

The ‘original sin’ can nonetheless be forgiven, since the main objective of the book is ultimately achieved: discussing and calibrating new scientific data and their interpretation both from a methodological and a theoretical point of view. Chapters using a broad range of state-of-the-art techniques are clustered according to the theoretical-interpretive framework they deploy: Part One focuses broadly on the ‘Transmission of Metallurgical Technologies, Knowledge, and Ideas’, with Chapter 2 by Kienlin discussing ‘..Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Myth of Passive Peripheries’; Part Two deals with ‘Prestige Economies and Exchange’, and is introduced by Rowlands (Ch. 6), with a discussion on ‘Unequal Exchange and the Articulation of Modes of Re-production’). Finally, Part Three is devoted to the ‘Circulation of Metal as Commodities’, and kicks off with Chapter 9, by Bray, dealing with ‘Biography, Prosopography, and the Density of Scientific Data’).

Two important essays deal with the provenance of tin and copper, through tin and lead isotope analysis. According to Nessel et al. (Ch. 5, ‘Bronze Production and Tin Provenance: New Thoughts about the Spread of Metallurgical Knowledge’), ¹²⁴Sn/¹²⁰Sn ratio alone cannot discriminate between the Brittany and the Erzgebirge sources: it seems, therefore, impossible to determine unambiguously the provenance of Únětice tin and identify clearly which exchange trajectories actually favoured the development of bronze metallurgy in Central Europe. Since the book's release, new research has been published on the analysis of twenty-seven Late Bronze Age (LBA) tin ingots (c. 1530–1300 bc) from five sites in the eastern Mediterranean (incl. Uluburun) (Berger et al., Reference Berger, Soles, Giumlia-Mair, Brügmann, Galili, Lockhoff and Pernicka2019). The results seem to indicate that the integration of tin and lead isotopes with trace element analyses increases the possibility of excluding some sources and, therefore, reduces the range of possible provenances of tin.

The interpretative model presented in Melheim et al.’s paper (Ch. 10, ‘The Role of Pre-Norsemen in Trade and Exchange of Commodities in Bronze Age Europe’) has been revised in more recent works by the same team. In this book's chapter, the authors suggest the existence of contact between LBA Scandinavian ‘pre-Norsemen’ and Iberian mines for the supply of copper, using lead isotope analysis on Scandinavian bronzes and selected iconographic similarities between the rock art traditions of both regions. Even if the authors do not exclude Alpine provenance (p. 137), the ‘Atlantic route’ is described as the most significant. With the recent expansion of the Alpine ores’ isotopic dataset, the framework has markedly changed towards a greater use of Italian Alpine copper (Melheim et al., Reference Melheim, Grandin, Persson, Billström, Stos-Gale and Ling2018), which, for example, seems to become the main component of Scandinavian and Italian swords after 1500 bc, and of all swords, including those from Germany, from 1300 bc.

These examples show to what extent the assessment of provenance may be affected by the amplitude of the reference dataset (see also Radivojević et al., Reference Radivojević, Roberts, Pernicka, Stos-Gale, Martinón-Torres and Rehren2018). Caution is essential in all kinds of mobility studies, including, for instance, those resorting to strontium isotope analysis for determining the geographical origin of a human or animal individual. We can certainly work with a criterion by exclusion, I believe in the effectiveness of looking at the internal variability of the samples we are analysing. How many different places did metal come from? Do different sites or polities have the same plurality of sources? It would be interesting to reflect on permeability, as this concept has to do with the degree of ‘openness’ of society to the flow of tangible goods, and as by-products, of ideas.

Added to the discussion on quantitative approaches regarding provenance and the composition of metal, chapters examine topics and case studies that stimulate general discussion on prestige economies, such as Susan Sherratt's Chapter 7, focused on the circulation/use of silver in the Near East and Mesopotamia, or Legarra Herrero's Chapter 8, devoted to the circulation and use of gold in Crete. Chapters also explore specialized manufacturing (Ch. 4, on lost wax casting of ideological objects in Colombia and Iberia, by Perea), regional dynamics related to the use of copper and gold (in the fifth millennium bc Romania, by Lazar et al., Ch. 3), and the socio-political organisation of mining, production, and metal exchange (as in Fontanals et al.’s third to first millennium bc ‘transect’ in northeastern Spain, Ch. 11).

Two central themes of the book, which almost all of the papers address, are mobility and value. To make the trading dialogue between different regional economies effective and fair, exchange actors had the necessity of converging towards a shared system of material quantification. Weighing equipment, such as balance weights and balance beams, begin to spread in Europe simultaneously with the emergence of copper as a commodity (Pare, Reference Pare, Fokkens and Harding2013). Balance weights are quite well distributed, at least from the first half of the second millennium bc, especially in those regions where contacts with eastern cultures were more frequent (Ialongo, Reference Ialongo2019; Rahmstorf, Reference Rahmstorf2019). Their shapes are rather standardized, and their metrology reveals the presence of a consistent system of multiples and fractions that is compatible with other Mediterranean standards (Ialongo, Reference Ialongo2019). If we accept the idea of a ‘global’ network connecting Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, not necessarily based on the dynamics of a World System (see Chapter 2, by Kienlin), but certainly organized around a certain degree of interdependency, we need to focus on the methods of quantifying, negotiating, and communicating economic value.

I would like to add a general comment on the central topic of mobility starting from Martinón-Torres’ words in the concluding chapter. He criticizes the ‘relatively little engagement with environmental and biomolecular archaeology, physical anthropology, or osteoarchaeology’ (p. 167). Moreover:

Archaeology, biogeochemistry, and genetics keep telling us that πάντα ῥεῖ (everything flows): people, animals, things, ideas. The emphasis on the concept of movement is not a prerogative of the contemporary thought, influenced by globalisation and large-scale migrations but a long-lasting legacy of ancient philosophy. The deeply rooted and pervasive dichotomy between the fluid and the immutable, also evoked by Levi Strauss’ hot vs cold societies (see also Vandkilde, Reference Vandkilde2014; Cavazzuti et al. Reference Cavazzuti, Cardarelli, Quondam, Salzani, Ferrante and Nisi2019; Nessel et al., Ch. 5, p. 78) reveals to which extent mobility and its implications have the power to divide society profoundly, especially in times of economic crises or political instability.

From the post-war period, and more intensively through post-modern discourse, the social sciences have been committed to de-constructing the traditional idea of fixed territorial identities, supporting the concept that, on the contrary, the essence of humans is relational, not based on a biological and cultural imprinting, but on a stratification of dynamic relations with ‘otherness’ (Harris & Cipolla, Reference Harris and Cipolla2017: Ch. 10). These efforts are justified by the assumption that strong cultural identities may feed outdated versions of protectionism, nationalism, racism, and inter-ethnical conflicts. Tracking mobility, therefore, becomes a fundamental research agenda, not only at an analytical and methodological level, but also with reference to anthropological, sociological, economic theories, as Metals, Minds, and Mobility clearly demonstrates (e.g. Ch. 2, by Kienlin, pp. 19–36, and Ch. 6, by Rowlands, pp. 87–97). According to ancient and modern DNA datasets, it seems that most of the current genetic variability in Europe was shaped during metal ages. Was that period the most dynamic of our history? What is emerging in contextual approaches to mobility in the third and second millennia, for example, is that the term mobility can be extremely generic and inconsistent, if we do not analyse the flow of people, goods, and ideas jointly in their historical and geographical contexts. If it is historically true that strong senses of identities and ethnicities can degenerate and led societies into conflicts with the ‘others’, so can mobility. A preferential access to the main networks and the possibility to move across boundaries may be something that creates or amplifies social inequalities (see, for example, Cavazzuti et al., Reference Cavazzuti, Cardarelli, Quondam, Salzani, Ferrante and Nisi2019).

I share Rafel-Fontanal et al.’s view about the ‘social function of metal’ (Ch. 11), which can become, in some historical contexts, a relevant aspect of group identity. Even without touching the difficult theme of ethnicities, all the chapters engage with the relationship between metal and group identity, power structures, and status symbols. As regards identities or even ethnicities, if we look at the variety of pins and swords in Bronze Age burials, it is difficult not to see in their techno-typological variability a ‘signature’ of the workshop, of the producer, and their social network. An extremely stimulating research project might try to integrate the biography of objects (typology, technology of production, use), the provenance of metal, the provenance of the individuals, their genealogy and their kinship and kin-like relations, preferably in one highly significant context. In this way, as in ethnographic research, we would have the opportunity to look into the complexity of the interplay between all these elements.

In short, as pointed out by Martinón-Torres in his concluding chapter, this volume provides a relevant incentive for climbing the ‘slope of enlightenment’ that emerging technologies encounter after early alternate phases of enthusiasm and disillusion, and before reaching the plateau of productivity.