# https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZ2PS5S6w1c
# @DanDavisHistory

2024-11-27

@JorgeStolfi
2 months ago
All those items were basically ingots of standardized weight. They may have been made to be used as money, but ultimately they were meant to be consumed by coppersmiths.  The coils would have been convenient starting material to make  long and thin items such as fibulas, rings, bracelets, etc.  The  "ax heads"  may have not been directly usable as such, but one such ingot was probably the right size to make a usable ax, chisel, adze, etc.  (The fact that the  "ax heads" had distinct composition seems to point that way).  In both cases the desired items could be made from the ingots by hammering, without the need for smelting; which would explain by the ingots had those shapes rather than others.

@DanDavisHistory
2 months ago
No they weren't associated with metalworking sites. And no you can't hammer them into tool shapes, copper alloys don't work like that.

@JorgeStolfi
2 months ago (edited)
 @DanDavisHistory  Those objects (like the Chinese "knife money" and the bronze "ox-hide" ingots) were made to be traded and hoarded as money, sure; but they had value ONLY because they could be used as source of copper for making copper artifacts.  Ditto for the "hockey pucks" of glass found in some shipwrecks.
Copper can be, and extensively was,  worked by hammering.  That is how native copper was used, for many centuries before people learned to melt it, and smelt it from ores.  Those Unetice artifacts themselves were cast into rough shapes but were obviously finished by hammering. Check those eyelets at the end of the "torcs", the corrections added to some "bows", and the sharp edges of some "ax blades".  Casting cannot produce those delicate shapes and smooth surfaces   The long thin wires of the "coils" could only be made by hammering.
Hammering  hardens copper and its alloys, but coppersmiths will soften it by periodic annealing -- heating at 500 C or so, well below the melting point. Blades were normally left un-annealed after the final round of hammering, to get a harder metal along the cutting edge.
The same was true of coins, until very recently.  Where would a goldsmith get the gold or silver for his work? By melting or hammering some coins, of course.  There were no Swiss bars or raw nuggets going around. Indeed that is what the coins were created for, and what gave them value.
That the Unetice objects were not found at copper-working sites is no evidence to the contrary.  A coppersmith (like a golsmith) could hardly afford to hoard raw metal.  He would acquire just enough "coins" to make the next intended object, and promptly consume them; or even work on metal provided by his client for the purpose.