The trade of tin from Cornwall dates from prehistory and is documented since Ancient times. It used to transit down the Rhône River to the Mediterranean.
See early travels to Britain from Greek explorers [1]. Incidentally Pytheas was from Marseille, near the Rhône delta and thus probably a hub for Cornish tin.
One of these is the form of tin called raṣāṣ. Its mines are known in many places. The first is that from Farangistān. In Farangistān it is cast in the form of pieces and stamped with a Farangī stamp as prevention against adulteration...(6)
raṣāṣ is Lead not Tin (in arabic at least) and it is indeed to this day used for seals to prevent adulteration
I wonder if this is confusion on the part of the translator or the original writer. The Latin word for tin stannum (hence Sn on the periodic table) originally referred to an alloy of lead and silver before the meaning shifted to refer to tin. Mistaking one element for another seems quite plausible without access to modern chemistry.
It seems not. Tintagel apparently means “fort by the neck of the land” ([1]), while the etymology of tin seems to be from a proto-Germanic word for the metal.
I was curious so dug a little. A quick google surprisingly doesn’t really turn up reliable looking sources, but it seems like the answer is no. Most likely either Cornish or Norman French in origin, unrelated to German-derived “tin”.
Whether earlier Islamic ceramics using tin-opacified glazes similarly depended on tin from southwestern England is a matter of speculation, but it is interesting to observe that the earliest such glazes seem to have their origins in Egypt in the eighth century AD, which is perhaps suggestive, given that tin seems to have been known as 'the Brittanic metal' in Egypt only a century earlier.
This stood out for me -- that tin was apparently known as the Brittanic metal. Linguistic hints like that are sometimes excellent clues to historic events, assuming this is accurate and all that. It suggests that Britain was the sole or primary source of tin to the region for a while.
Makes me curious about other aspects of the history of metal production, metal trade, etc.
Made me curious too: Apparently Britain indeed became the primary source of tin to the region after the 3rd century AD as Iberian mines became exhausted. [1]
Tin is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, with about two parts per million (ppm), compared to iron with 50,000 ppm, copper with 70 ppm, lead with 16 ppm, arsenic with 5 ppm, silver with 0.1 ppm, and gold with 0.005 ppm (Valera & Valera 2003, p. 10). Ancient sources of tin were therefore rare, and the metal usually had to be traded over very long distances to meet demand in areas which lacked tin deposits.
Also:
Archaeological importance
The importance of tin to the success of Bronze Age cultures and the scarcity of the resource offers a glimpse into that time period's trade and cultural interactions, and has therefore been the focus of intense archaeological studies.
That's some good stuff. Thanks.
For those who don't readily recognize the word Iberian, that's the peninsula where Spain and Portugal are. (Maybe that's just me. Maybe it's not.)
I also found it curious that the main sources of tin in ancient times don’t seem to coincide with the earliest known instances of bronze: [2]
- 4650 BC Balkans
- 3500 BC Mesopotamia
- 3300 BC Indus
- 3150 BC Egypt
- 3200 BC Aegean
- 2900 BC Gansu
Makes me wonder how early metallurgists discovered bronze. Maybe they worked with smaller local sources of tin? Or maybe this is just another gap in our knowledge of ancient history…
So you know a lot more about metals than I do. I wouldn't have caught that at all:
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (such as aluminium, manganese, nickel or zinc) and sometimes non-metals or metalloids such as arsenic, phosphorus or silicon. These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as strength, ductility, or machinability.
Little has changed in 750 years, then.