Sacrifice, scrap or something else? Practices of metalwork deposition in Late Bronze Age Britain and Ireland

Abstract

• Throughout the Bronze Age, large quantities of metal artefacts were deposited across Europe. Interpretations often centre around whether these deposits may have been sacrificial offerings to deities or else discarded scrap metal intended for recycling. These grand ideas mask the individual decisions local communities made when depositing their objects, such as how objects were treated or what places were chosen. These were practices that allowed people to manage the world in which they lived. In this Evening Talk, Dr Matthew Knight, Senior Curator at National Museums Scotland, will approach Late Bronze Age metalwork deposits made in Argyll and Bute and set them in the wider context of Bronze Age Britain and Ireland to highlight regional variations in approaches to deposition across time and space.