Tin in het Oude Nabije Oosten (original) (raw)
2012
This essay aims to give a comprehensive overview of the production, uses and provenance of tin in the Ancient Near East. When discussing the production method of tin, focus is put on the extraction of the main tin ore, cassiterite, and on its processing from raw material to easily transportable tin ingots. The chapter on the uses of tin discusses both the applications of pure tin and the use of tin in the production of high quality bronzes. Pure tin would in rare cases be used for the making of artefacts, but was more commonly used as a coating, a solder or a means of payment. However, the most important application of tin was undoubtedly its alloying with copper to form bronze. The advantages of bronze over copper are discussed, as well as the transition from earlier arsenical bronze to tin bronze. Finally the provenance of tin in the Near East is examined and the writer concludes that, with the emergence of new geological and archaeological data, this issue might not be as complicated as previously imagined. A map composed from information from numerous different articles shows the newly discovered tin mineralizations in the Near East and reinforces the theory that tin was first locally exploited before being imported from Central Asia. (Original text in Dutch)
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