https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-50213846
QuoteNorth Wales was Britain's main source of copper for about 200 years during the Bronze Age, new research has found.
Scientists analysed metal from the Great Orme, Conwy, and found it was made into tools and weapons, and traded across what is today's Europe.
Historians once thought the Orme's copper mine - now a museum - had been a small-scale operation. Experts now believe there was a bonanza from 1600-1400 BC, with artefacts found in Sweden, France and Germany.
The research, by scientists from the University of Liverpool, involved sampling copper ore from the old mine and a nearby smelting site. It allowed experts like Dr Alan Williams, the geoarchaeologist who co-wrote the study published in the journal Antiquity, to create a "fingerprint" of the metal based on chemical impurities and isotopic properties.
"What is today's Europe" but not "what is today Sweden, France and Germany". Hmm.
I think that makes sense actually - the trading was done back when "Europe" arguably didn't exist, because nobody had yet thought to give that name to that region, but the finding of the artefacts happened in modern times, when Sweden, France and Germany do exist.
And there was me thinking that 24 other countries had managed to leave the EU while Britain dawdles...
QuoteGeological estimates suggest "several hundred tonnes of copper metal were produced, enough to produce thousands of bronze tools or weapons every year, equivalent to at least half a million objects in the 200-year bonanza period".
That makes an average about 2,500-ish objects per year, or a notional 6-7 per day. Still to my mind a 'small-scale operation', albeit with wide trading scope.