Tecnología metalúrgica del cobre y del bronce durante el período Postalayótico en Mallorca (ca. s. VI a. C. - s. I a. C.)

Abstract

The funerary world of Post-Talaiotic Mallorca (650-550 B.C – 123 B.C) presents great diversity and material and spatial complexity. The vast majority of the necropoleis of this period were excavated during the twentieth century, many of them during the first half of the century, so the contextual information of the objects recovered from them is generally uncertain. This thesis explores the archaeometallurgical study of a selection of copper-based metallic materials from the ancient collections of the Museu del Monestir de Lluc and the Museu Regional d’Artà, originating from specific Mallorcan burial caves of the Post-Talaiotic era: Cometa des Morts I, Son Bauçà, Es Morro, Es Fiters and Sa Cova. This research has been approached from different perspectives. On one hand, attempts have been made to reconstruct archaeological contexts, where possible, from the available documentation. On the other hand, a selection of samples for elemental composition analysis and lead isotope analysis was gathered in order to obtain physical information about the objects themselves. Finally, Technological Anthropology theoretical tools have been used with the aim of interpreting the archaeological and chemical data from an approach that allows for the study of the human dimension of the technological processes. All this has been carried out in seeking to discover the agency of local communities in a period of the Balearic prehistory of important cultural interaction processes, in which the Phoenician-Punic world has enjoyed great prominence in archaeological literature.