A Compositional and Microstructural Study of Eighth-Century BC Bronzes from Moita Da Ladra (Tagus Estuary): How Did the Spread of the Phoenician Metallurgy Take Place in Western Iberia?

Metals from a votive deposit at Moita da Ladra (Tagus Estuary) dating to the eighth century bc were studied by micro-EDXRF, optical microscopy and Vickers testing to investigate the adoption of Phoenician innovations by indigenous communities. Artefacts are made of bronze alloys with suitable tin contents (11.6 ± 2.3 wt%) and very low iron impurities (<0.05 wt%), and were often manufactured using the long post-casting sequence. Comparisons with indigenous and Phoenician metallurgies from western Iberia revealed a conservative technology suggesting that the spread of Phoenician innovations was very slow. In this region, the adoption of a diversified copper-based metallurgy and reduction furnaces only seems to occur during the Post-Orientalizing Period, c. sixth to fourth centuries bc. © 2015 University of Oxford.