Re: [TIED] [cybalist] The Tin Islands

From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2420
Date: 2000-05-16

Gerry makes an interesting post. One problem in our discussions so far is the rather vague nature of what constitutes 'bronze'. Bronze is a word like 'steel', i.e., it speaks to a **range** of alloys. The literature I've read seems to prefer 'arsenical copper' for non-tin 'bronze'.
 
The online Britannica goes into the various recipes for copper+ 'bronze'. If you go too far afield, you get a 'brass'. There is a paragraph there that says iron won out mostly because the known copper and/or tin deposits had become exhausted.
 
Arsenical copper is copper with a little arsenic. Arsenic, it seems, often occurs naturally in copper deposits, and what the ancient metallurgists got was nature's own brew. In any event, a little arsenic made for a better copper.
 
Mark.