Metalworkers and their Tools: Symbolism, Function, and Technology in the Bronze and Iron Ages

Metalworkers and their Tools brings together 12 papers by 22 authors from the "Metools" international symposium organised in at Queens University, Belfast in June 2016 as part of the HardRock project "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: context, function, and choice of early metalworking tools on Europe's Atlantic façade" (Marie Sklodowska Curie, No. 623392) and the "Metal Ages in Europe" commission of the International Union of Pre- and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP). Its aim was to shine a spotlight on the tools of the metalworker and to follow their evolution from the beginning of the Bronze Age through to the Iron Age, as well as the place held by metalworking and its artisans in the economic and social landscape of the period.

Linda Boutoille has a PhD in archaeology from the Université de Bourgogne and is currently Research Fellow based at Queen's University. She has held a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship, a Royal Irish Academy Research Grant, a British Academy Research Grant and more recently a Gerda Henkel Research Grant. Her main research interests lie with both the technological and organisational aspects of prehistoric craft activities, and of Bronze Age metalwork production in particular.

Rebecca Peake has a PhD in archaeology from the Université de Bourgogne and is currently a senior project manager with the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) and a member of the research team UMR 6298 of CNRS. Her published work focuses on interpretative approaches to land occupation and funerary practices in the Bronze and the Early Iron Ages.