At the end of March, we had the pleasure to be able to present the first results of the Sögel Project at the Annual Conference for Archaeometry and Heritage management at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim. The 3-day conference, supported by the Curt-Engelhorn-Zentrum Archäometrie gGmbH (CEZA), the Gesellschaft für Naturwissenschaftliche Archäologie Archaeometrie e.V. (GNAA) and the Reiss-Engelhorn Museum,  presented numerous presentations and posters discussing the many archaeological studies and analytical techniques that are associated with archaeometry including archaeometallurgy.

The first geochemical characterisation of the Bronze Age blades of the Sögel-Wohlde district were presented here which have shown the use of long-distance trade networks to facilitate the rise of the Nordic Bronze Age. At the center of these trade networks were the Mitterberg region in Austria and the Slovakian ore districts which supplied the majority of copper ores for the Sögel-Wohlde district. Further copper sources, such as the Italian Alps may have been used as well, however, future research based on a larger database is required. In the end, the first results provide a glimpse of the extensive trade networks that were already in place some 3500 years ago, and encourages us to get a better picture of the early Bronze Age and the drive to become a metal-using society.

The early results described above can be read in the Metalla journal from the Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum: Cornelis B.J.T., Wittke, A., Neumann, D. & Berger, D. (2023) Swords of the North: first results of the geochemical characterisation of Bronze Age blades of Sögel-Wohlde. Metalla Sonderheft, 12, pp. 73 – 75. https://doi.org/10.46586/metalla.v.2023.i12