A socketed sickle of British manufacture has been found on the Suret website in Val-de-Reui in France’s decrease Seine valley. The sickle dates to the Atlantic Late Bronze Age (1200–600 BC) and is a really uncommon discover in France, considered one of solely ten identified.
The sickle is product of copper alloy and is full, though the tip is damaged off however nonetheless current. The sides of the curved blade are chipped from use. The socket has a dangling ring on the aspect and two holes the place the picket deal with was hooked up with pegs. One of many pegs remains to be inside the outlet and seems to be product of bones. Traces of the deal with have survived contained in the socket. The kind of wooden couldn’t be conclusively recognized, however testing narrowed down the chances to willow, poplar, black alder, hornbeam and hazel with willow because the likeliest candidate.
Originating from the British Isles, the sort of socketed sickle is uncommon in France; solely round ten examples have been recorded, focused on the Channel coast (valleys of the Somme and the Seine) and the Atlantic coast. Within the Seine valley, two examples had been beforehand identified, one from Vernon (Eure), the opposite taken from the river in Paris. This object bears witness to the commerce networks that united the 2 banks of the Channel on the finish of the Bronze Age and highlights the frequentation of main river routes and the circulation of metallic within the nice Atlantic space.
The Atlantic Late Bronze Age was characterised by a pointy enhance in scale of the commerce in bronze metalwork between communities on the Atlantic seaboard. Earlier within the Bronze Age, the commerce in metalwork concerned small numbers of artifacts, most of which is believed to have been diplomatic reward exchanges between elites. The archaeological document level to a serious shift in metalwork exchanges from 1200 B.C. onward, growing in amount and frequency to turn out to be a nascent mercantile commerce.
