More than 2,000 years before the Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean, another famous ship wrecked in the Mediterranean Sea off the eastern shores of Uluburun—in present-day Turkey— carrying tons of rare metal. Since its discovery in 1982, scientists have been studying the contents of the Uluburun shipwreck to gain a better understanding of the people and political organizations that dominated the time period known as the Late
Now, a team of scientists, including Michael Frachetti, professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, have uncovered a surprising finding: small communities of highland pastoralists living in present-day Uzbekistan in Central Asia produced and supplied roughly one-third of the tin found aboard the ship—tin that was en route to markets around the Mediterranean to be made into coveted bronze metal.
The research, published on November 30 in Science Advances, was made possible by advances in geochemical analyses that enabled researchers to determine with high-level certainty that some of the tin originated from a prehistoric mine in Uzbekistan, more than 2,000 miles from Haifa, where the ill-fated ship loaded its cargo.
But how could that be? During this period, the mining regions of Central Asia were occupied by small communities of highlander pastoralists—far from a major industrial center or empire. And the terrain between the two locations—which passes through Iran and Mesopotamia—was rugged, which would have made it extremely difficult to pass tons of heavy metal.
Frachetti and other archaeologists and historians were enlisted to help put the puzzle pieces together. Their findings unveiled a shockingly complex supply chain that involved multiple steps to get the tin from the small mining community to the Mediterranean marketplace.
“It appears these local miners had access to vast international networks and—through overland trade and other forms of connectivity—were able to pass this all-important commodity all the way to the Mediterranean,” Frachetti said.
“It’s quite amazing to learn that a culturally diverse, multiregional and multivector system of trade underpinned Eurasian tin exchange during the Late Bronze Age.”
Adding to the mystique is the fact that the mining industry appears to have been run by small-scale local communities or free laborers who negotiated this marketplace outside of the control of kings, emperors or other political organizations, Frachetti said.
“To put it into perspective, this would be the trade equivalent of the entire United States sourcing its energy needs from small backyard oil rigs in central Kansas,” he said.
