Cutting edge technology: constructing and contextualising Late Bronze Age toolkits

Tools are an essential part of human life. Across Britain, thousands of axes, knives, chisels, gouges and hammers, survive from the Late Bronze Age (LBA), many of which are held in museum collections. Three thousand years ago these were used for a wide range of activities before they were buried in the landscape, often in advance of reaching the end of their functional life.

And yet, we have only the most general sense of the purposes of these tools (e.g. 'woodworking'). Modern craft perspectives highlight that such tools and their associated tasks are more complex; they are often multi-functional and used as part of 'kits'. Did prehistoric tools function similarly?

As the use and meaning of ancient tools are poorly understood, they rarely appear in museum displays and are often absent from wider discussions in academic and popular literature. This Collaborative Doctoral Partnership will transform the interpretation of Late Bronze Age tools. A new dynamic and informed approach will have wider implications for how museums and heritage institutions as well as archaeologists think about and present prehistoric crafts to the public.

Three primary research questions will drive the research: 1. How were different tools used in the LBA in Scotland and Northern England?

2. How can we work across traditional object categories to think about these objects in more connected ways as toolkits for specific tasks? 3. How did the way tools were used effect their eventual deposition and place in the landscape?

Through these questions the project will explore not only the range of associated practices that are linked with tools (e.g. craft specialisation) but also what they meant to the people of the past. These tools have historically been studied in isolation, focusing on singular functions, but conceptualising them as part of multi-functional toolkits will shed new light on their use and meaning.

This project is unique in undertaking a cross-object, cross-material approach to assess how tools might be used together.

The CDP will involve a detailed study of LBA metal tools from northern Britain held in museum collections to establish how they were being used, with what techniques and on what materials. Hundreds of tools are stored in collections but have seen limited recent study, and new finds are acquired regularly through excavations and metal-detecting activity.

To understand these new discoveries appropriately, and to reframe historic collections adequately, we require an innovative interpretive framework that this project will provide. This is essential if we are to communicate the role and significance of these tools to the public in a meaningful way. The collections within the Scottish History and Archaeology (SH&A) Department at NMS are key for this, as one of the largest collections of LBA tools in the UK.

Other collections, such as the Great North Museum (Newcastle) and Perth Museum and Art Gallery, hold smaller but significant collections of tools, which would enhance the dataset. The study will result in more nuanced public presentations of the material.

A complimentary programme of experimental archaeology involving the production and use of replica metal tools employed for different craft activities will develop a reference collection, allowing the wear seen on archaeological artefacts to be compared with that produced through experimental tasks. This will include woodworking, chopping trees and working leather.

It will be the first such programme of activities ever undertaken in Britain. This will be done in collaboration with the Scottish Crannog Centre, an important venue for understanding ancient crafts and for public engagement, connecting the public directly with tools and activities of the LBA.