ABSTRACT
The quest of the 'when' and 'where' of the world's earliest metallurgy remains a contended topic in modern scholarship. This chapter looks beyond the focus on origins by presenting a tentative model of 'how' and 'why' metallurgy was invented, looking into choices and skills involved in the selection, experimentation and processing of distinctively coloured copper minerals and ores throughout c. 2,000 years in the Balkans. The quantity of extant production evidence from the Balkans still stands in stark contrast to c. 4.7 tonnes of extant massive copper implements that circulated in this area in the 5th millennium BCE. The brightly coloured minerals appear to have been collected by the Belovode and Vinca ore prospectors in paragenesis with dark-coloured manganese minerals. The colour factor emerges as particularly important in the light of the earliest tin bronze artefact discovered at the site of Plocnik.
