The social and technological dimensions of Copper Age and Bronze Age metallurgy in Mallorca, Spain

The innovation and development of metal technology in prehistoric societies is not merely a technological achievement but a complex process driven by social and material factors. This thesis, an effort to document and understand such a process, examines the evidence for the production, distribution, use, and deposition of metal artifacts on a series of Copper Age and Bronze Age sites (dating between approximately 2500 and 1200 BC) from the Spanish island of Mallorca.;The research design of this project is explicitly multiscalar, and particular attention is given to the microscale contexts of sites and individual deposits. A broad methodology is used to document the activities of raw material procurement and distribution (via geoarchaeological survey, elemental characterization, and lead isotope analysis), artifact production (via metallography), artifact use (via microscopy), and deposition (through an analysis of sites and site reports). A social theory that foregrounds action and agency is used to situate these activities within a social framework.;The data on these metallurgical activities reveal significant differences between the Pretalayotic Copper Age and the Talayotic Bronze Age, and these differences are related to the ways that these social actions were structured. Taken together, it appears that when performing the tasks associated with metals and metallurgy, Pretalayotic people had a greater degree of flexibility. Their actions were more variable and subject to change (and possibly innovation), and their products and exchange networks were less standardized. During the succeeding Talayotic period, people performed these tasks in much more structured and specific, perhaps rule-bound, ways. An analysis of the social contexts within which these activities took place reinforces this inference. No doubt, social interaction was complex and situational in both periods, but structures of social action were visibly more binding in the later time period.;Despite the differences between the two periods, it does appear that metal artifacts (as material culture) and the activities surrounding them and their production were active components in the structuring of society.