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Concept
Bronze
Summary
Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper, commonly with about 12–12.5% tin and often with the addition of other metals (including aluminium, manganese, nickel, or zinc) and sometimes non-metals, such as phosphorus, or metalloids such as arsenic 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.
The archaeological period in which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The beginning of the Bronze Age in western Eurasia and India is conventionally dated to the mid-4th millennium BCE (~3500 BCE), and to the early 2nd millennium BCE in China; elsewhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting about 1300 BCE and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BCE, although bronze continued to be much more widely used than it is in modern times.
Because historical artworks were often made of brasses (copper and zinc) and bronzes with different compositions, modern museum and scholarly descriptions of older artworks increasingly use the generalized term "copper alloy" instead.
The word bronze (1730–1740) is borrowed from Middle French bronze (1511), itself borrowed from Italian bronzo 'bell metal, brass' (13th century, transcribed in Medieval Latin as bronzium) from either:
bróntion, back-formation from Byzantine Greek brontēsíon (βροντησίον, 11th century), perhaps from Brentḗsion (Βρεντήσιον, 'Brindisi', reputed for its bronze; or originally:
in its earliest form from Old Persian birinj, biranj (برنج, 'brass', modern berenj) and piring (پرنگ) 'copper', from which also came Georgian brinǯi (ბრინჯი ), Turkish pirinç, and Armenian brinj (բրինձ), also meaning 'bronze'.
The discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects that were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper ("Chalcolithic") predecessors.
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