An early lead-smelting tradition in north-east Iberia: a short-lived innovation of the third millennium BC

The polymetallic origins and non-linear development of metallurgy have only relatively recently attracted more scholarly attention. Within this framework, the identification of three lead-smelting slag nodules in early second-millennium BC contexts at Minferri (Catalonia, Spain) provides what is currently the earliest direct evidence of lead smelting in Iberia. These materials are linked to previous indirect evidence of lead smelting in the area from the early third millennium BC. Despite the persistence of lead smelting across the Pyrenees in southern France, it was abandoned in north-east Iberia after the mid-second millennium BC, highlighting divergent sociotechnological pathways even in areas of close cultural contact.