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Late Bronze Age British sickle found in France
A socketed sickle of British manufacture has been discovered at the Suret site in Val-de-Reui in France’s lower Seine valley. The sickle dates to the Atlantic Late Bronze Age (1200–600 BC) and is a very rare find in France, one of only ten known.
The sickle is made of copper alloy and is complete, although the tip is broken off but still present. The edges of the curved blade are chipped from use. The socket has a hanging ring on the side and two holes where the wooden handle was attached with pegs. One of the pegs is still inside the hole and appears to be made of bones. Traces of the handle have survived inside the socket. The type of wood could not be conclusively identified, but testing narrowed down the possibilities to willow, poplar, black alder, hornbeam and hazel with willow as the likeliest candidate.
Originating from the British Isles, this type of socketed sickle is rare in France; only around ten examples have been recorded, concentrated on the Channel coast (valleys of the Somme and the Seine) and the Atlantic coast. In the Seine valley, two examples were previously known, one from Vernon (Eure), the other taken from the river in Paris. This object bears witness to the trade networks that united the two banks of the Channel at the end of the Bronze Age and highlights the frequentation of major river routes and the circulation of metal in the great Atlantic area.
The Atlantic Late Bronze Age was characterized by a sharp increase in scale of the trade in bronze metalwork between communities on the Atlantic seaboard. Earlier in the Bronze Age, the trade in metalwork involved small numbers of artifacts, most of which is believed to have been diplomatic gift exchanges between elites. The archaeological record point to a major shift in metalwork exchanges from 1200 B.C. onward, increasing in quantity and frequency to become a nascent mercantile trade.
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