> The Tin Islands are usually identified as the Scilly Isles off
Great Britain.
>
> My understanding, from my reading, is that the Iron Age gets it
main impetus from a shortage of tin sometime before 1200 BCE. I get
the idea the Hittites forged iron swords out of necessity rather than
any desire to improve their armament.
Leslie Palmer makes the point that the first iron weapons were in
fact inferior to the Bronze. The difference, he suggests, is that
iron is a lot more plentiful, and so larger armies can be fielded
(even if poorly armed, instead of small armies well armed). This
certainly shows up in Mycenaean times. The Pylian records show in an
emergency temple bronzes were melted to make weapons, and even then
relatively small armies were in the field. Even the Battle of Kadesh
between Ramses II and the Hittites was a relatively small scale
affair even though the Hittites were iron armed, many of their allies
were not.
>
> What caused the 'shortage' of tin?. Movements of IE peoples? Proto-
Celts? Inter-ethnic chaos on the plains of Hungary? Or was it that
the mines were mined out, and no one had found a replacement.
>
> And what can be said about 'the Tin Road' a la 'the Amber Road'
or 'the Silk Road'. The Tin Road would have been east west, from the
Seine to the upper Danube and thence east and south.
Another "Tin Road" ran from the Scilly Isles to Amorica, south to
Burdigala, up along the Garonne and across to Marsala (Marseilles)
and thence East across the Mediterranean. This was certainly the
route that Pytheas took on his travels. This seems to be the route
taken by Egyptian faience beads from the eastern Mediterranean to the
Salisbury plain and points west and north, during the so
called "Bronze Age".
Regards
John
Regards
John