Hollow and mound: landscapes of tin extraction in Bronze Age Cornwall

The extraction of tin, one of the key materials which defined the Bronze Age, usually elicits economically determinist interpretations, tin being conceived as a resource which was extracted and distributed within a capitalocene economic system. This thesis sought to subvert functionalist and retrojective narratives of Bronze Age tin extraction by taking a posthuman feminist approach to place and experience, asking how extractive activities might have provoked different engagements with materials, and how these engagements had lasting impacts on landscapes. A methodology was developed which incorporated archival evidence, often in non-traditional forms, which has previously been overlooked by conventional approaches – almost all evidence for tin extraction in prehistoric Cornwall comes from reported finds made by streamworkers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Evidence for tin extraction in the Bronze Age was reviewed, and paper finds, including a rare tree coffin burial, and several multi-period metalwork hoards, were found in archives and related to updated understandings of Bronze Age archaeology. A ‘patchwork’ approach was developed to reflect the processual and multiplicitous properties of streamworks, and as a result, stories which upset economically determinist narratives have emerged. This methodology revealed multi-temporal encounters in streamworks, both during and after extractive activity, which may have informed practices of metalwork deposition and some possible Bronze Age burials. These multi-temporal encounters were reflected in the archives the artefacts came from, and informed the ‘patchwork approach’ taken. Overall, this thesis has, by opening spaces for nonconventional modes of archaeological interpretation, revealed different pasts created by Bronze Age tin extraction.