Child Miners, Mother Goddesses, and One of the Greatest Powers of the Bronze Age

In ancient times, metal ores such as tin and copper were hard to come by. So in 4,500 BC when the innovators discovered how to produce bronze from a mixture of the two, there was a mad rush to extract as much ore as possible in order to cash in on the booming bronze trade. One of the most productive- and thus most powerful – centers of activity was the British Isles. In the area surrounding the Irish Sea (Dublin, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, and western Scotland) large deposits of both tin and copper were discovered. Moreover, by this time an adequate shipping industry had sprung up that was able to transport the minerals from the British Isles to the powerful empires of Europe and the Mediterranean region. The small British mining communities became some of the most important outposts in the trans-European Bronze Age trade networks.

Mining and metalwork are difficult tasks even today. 6,000 years ago, it would take an entire village or kinship group to pull off a successful smelting operation. First the ore would have to be extracted from the ground- tools would have to be made, tunnels dug, minerals mined; then incredibly hot fires would have to be made in order to smelt the copper or tin – wood would have to be gathered, fires stoked, metal manipulated; finally, the finished products would have to be packaged and shipped to markets in France, Germany, Spain, and perhaps even as far as Denmark and Turkey. This difficult operation would mean that the whole family had to pitch in – children being no exception.