Bronze and Copper Metal work

Bronze and Copper Metal Work

Introduction

This paper discusses the bronze and copper metalwork. It will be discussing the time period the advancement was invented and the circumstances that led to the invention. Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. The discovery of bronze in late 4th millennium BC enabled people to create objects which were more durable than their copper and stone counterparts. In antiquity, many cultures produced works of high art using bronze (David, 2002). These include bronze plaques from the African Kingdom of Benin; Grecian bronzes in the form of figures from Greek mythology and Chinese bronze ceremonial vessels of the Shang and Zhou dynasty. In modern times, bronze continues to be one of the materials of choice for monumental statuary.

Discussion

Advancement in Copper

The copper was one of the first metals used by the man, initially used in its natural state, native copper, and did not know the mechanisms by which they could melt the ore. In these early days as molded by the techniques of hammering and / or cold smoothie, so this stage but is still considered Neolithic Chalcolithic. The improvement of technical ceramics allowed experimentation with the processes metallurgical, beginning to understand them. When controlled and began to perform various alloys with other minerals, the most common being mixed with arsenic, first, and later with tin, which led to a new metal, bronze. The Copper Age, is also called the Chalcolithic is the period during which the man makes flint tools at the same time he finds and transforms copper (David, 2002). These first objects appear as early as 3000 BC. Companies in the Copper Age are based on a lifestyle of agriculture. The distribution of this metal in the world, and Europe in particular, was a detonator for metallurgy techniques and social and economic changes that followed the ages of bronze and iron.

Advancement in Bronze

The Bronze Age comes from a long transformation of Neolithic society. We see increasing population growth, new needs arise and this phenomenon is closely related to the invention of metallurgy. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, takes place at all levels: social, cultural, economic: it is a necessity and an essential element of power. The lifestyles based on agro-pastoral villages organized around large structures associated with farming well established. These villages are often surrounded by a moat and fortified walls, the people sit on their power and wealth (Paul & Nicholson, 2000). It makes weapons, the war has become part of everyday life of man, and everything is going so fast. This is based on the assumption that the metal causes the transformation of societies that use it, causing an intensification of long-distance trade, a certain specialization of labor and increasing social differentiation.

Such innovation is easily recognizable in the archaeological record, but is of minor importance for the emergence of the first civilizations urban, for example, the development of symbols pictographs and ideographs that would form the proto ...