Cutting edge technology: constructing and contextualising Late Bronze Age toolkits

Tools are an essential part of human life. Across Britain, thousands of axes, knives, chisels, gouges and hammers, survive from the Late Bronze Age (LBA), many of which are held in museum collections. Three thousand years ago these were used for a wide range of activities before they were buried in the landscape, often in advance of reaching the end of their functional life. And yet, we have only the most general sense of the purposes of these tools (e.g. 'woodworking'). Modern craft perspectives highlight that such tools and their associated tasks are more complex; they are often multi-functional and used as part of 'kits'. Did prehistoric tools function similarly? As the use and meaning of ancient tools are poorly understood, they rarely appear in museum displays and are often absent from wider discussions in academic and popular literature. This Collaborative Doctoral Partnership will transform the interpretation of Late Bronze Age tools. A new dynamic and informed approach will have wider implications for how museums and heritage institutions as well as archaeologists think about and present prehistoric crafts to the public.

Three primary research questions will drive the research:
1. How were different tools used in the LBA in Scotland and Northern England?
2. How can we work across traditional object categories to think about these objects in more connected ways as toolkits for specific tasks?
3. How did the way tools were used effect their eventual deposition and place in the landscape?

Through these questions the project will explore not only the range of associated practices that are linked with tools (e.g. craft specialisation) but also what they meant to the people of the past. These tools have historically been studied in isolation, focusing on singular functions, but conceptualising them as part of multi-functional toolkits will shed new light on their use and meaning. This project is unique in undertaking a cross-object, cross-material approach to...