Havering bronze hoard to go on show in Docklands museum

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/oct/21/havering-hoard-of-bronze-age-objects-to-go-on-show-in-london

Swords, axes, spearheads, etc.

[Tim]

That is one that I will make sure I get to...

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/feb/10/french-bracelet-among-surprises-in-mysterious-havering-hoard

More info on what's in the hoard, including Continental items.

[Tim]

Archaeologist suggesting that something not yet fully understood has a ritual basis...

I did not need to consult a single one let alone a roomful to get that answer...

[aligern]

Perhaps the idea was that you took along your broken axe head and 'bought' a new one by trading in your old one and paying a smaller fee than if you just bought a new one. In a metal poor society I can't see that the introduction of iron would lead to an abandoning of bronze. It would just be converted int objects that bronze was better suited to than hard to cast, hard to work iron. At the point that iron superseded bronze it will have been expensive.
Roy

[RichT]

Trying to guess why people did what they did in the past based just on the artefacts is tough.

A number of excavated Late Oil households contain surprising numbers of metallic figurines. The metal used is neither valuable nor durable, and it appears from traces of surviving pigment that some of the figurines may have been painted (though the great majority were not). They depict mostly human males (with some equids and occasionally elephantidae) and appear to be equipped hunting implements or perhaps weapons of war, all of which are very, and in some cases extremely, anachronistic. Many are associated with small plastic cuboids with a common pattern of surface markings, which were probably used for divination.