O depósito metálico de Agro Velho-Montalegre e a sua relação com o Sudoeste Peninsular (?)

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses the results of the archaeometallurgical study of a flat axe of Bujões/Barcelos type that belonged to the Agro Velho hoard, located in the Montalegre council, northern Portugal. This is an important tin mining region where has been identified one of the earliest evidence of binary bronze productions in the country, attributed to the Middle Bronze Age, second quarter of the 2nd Millennium BC.
The biography of the studied axe crossed (by vicissitudes of the archaeological research process) the history of the main scientific and museological complex of Portugal, rooted in the second half of the eighteenth century. It was located in the old buildings of the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon that were mostly destroyed by a huge fire in 1978. Miraculously saved from the fire, the Middle Bronze Age axe of the Agro Velho hoard is kept today in the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography of the District of Setúbal (MAEDS).