One of the largest hoards of the Late Bronze Age: this scrap hoard discovered in Weißig near Dresden weighs around 20 kilograms and is made up of 63 complete objects and 328 fragments. Credit: Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen / J. Lipták
A study by the Universities of Göttingen and Salento reveals that Bronze Age Europeans may have operated under a market economy, challenging the notion that such systems only arose with modern states and coinage. The study analyzed more than 20,000 metal objects from more than 1,000 hoards that were buried in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, and Germany between around 2,300 BC and 800 BC. The researchers used a statistical technique to determine if the analyzed objects are multiples of a unit of weight.
“To be honest, we were quite surprised by our results,” adds Giancarlo Lago, who carried out the research while at the University of Salento, Department of Cultural Heritage. “Our findings defy some long-established beliefs among archaeologists, economists, and anthropologists. They also suggest that many of the differences that we see between ‘Western’ and supposedly ‘primitive’ cultures are not as substantial as we might think.