Late Bronze Age crested helmets along transalpines long-distance trade routes

Abstract

Recently the fragment of a bronze helmet with embossed ornaments was found at the Northern foot of the high ridge of the Alps (Hohe Tauern). It was discovered in the left bank of the river Anlauf along which a route dated back by copper cake finds at least to the Bronze Age led to the Korntauern mountain pass (2460 m a.s.l.). Already in 1838 a hoard with bronze mining picks, a winged axe as well as copper cakes were found at the mountain pass of Lueg which forms the entrance into the Alpine area mfrom the Northern Salzburg flatlands. Half of another crested helmet of the same type belonged to a large hoard in Moosbruckschrofen at the Pillersattel mountain pass, discoverd in 2001. Metallurgical in - vestigations prove that the copper used for all three helmets comes from sulfidic ores close to the Mitter berg area in Mühlbach-Bischofshofen, where mining was in process during the Bronze Age. This gives reason for the assumption that there were various producing workshops which were in close contact with each other. Furthermore the helmets – regarding the special value and their significant finding sites – render additional evidence for certain socio economic aspects in the Late Bronze Age. Therefore they possibly originally belonged to wagon driving potentates in the Northern Alpine forelands who controlled the inner Alpine exploitation as well as the transalpine trade of copper.