A new study shows that people in Bronze Age Britain continued to rely on animal bone tools for copper extraction at the Great Orme mine in North Wales, even after metal tools became available. Researchers examined 150 bone artefacts and found they were shaped for specific tasks like splitting rock and scraping ore. The practice lasted at least nine centuries from 3700 to 2800 years ago.
The analysis focused on bones from the Bronze Age copper-mining complex at Great Orme. Over 30,000 bone fragments have been recovered from the site since excavations began in the early 1990s. More than half came from cattle, with others from sheep, goats and pigs. Archaeologists Olga Zagorodnia of the British Museum and Harriet White, an independent researcher, used high-resolution microscopy and replica experiments to identify deliberate shaping and use-wear patterns on the bones.