Bronze is an alloy consisting primarily of copper , commonly with about 12— These additions produce a range of alloys some of which are harder than copper alone or have other useful properties, such as strength , ductility , or machinability.
The archaeological period during which bronze was the hardest metal in widespread use is known as the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age , which started about BCE and reaching most of Eurasia by about BCE, although bronze continued to be much more widely used than it is in modern times.
Because historical artworks were often made of bronzes and brasses alloys of copper and zinc of different metallic compositions, modern museum and scholarly descriptions of older artworks increasingly use the generalized term "copper alloy" instead of the names of individual alloys. This is done at least in part to prevent database searches from failing merely because of errors or disagreements in the naming of historic copper alloys. The word bronze — is borrowed from Middle French bronze , itself borrowed from Italian bronzo ' bell metal, brass ' 13th century, transcribed in Medieval Latin as bronzium from either:.
The discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects that were harder and more durable than had previously been possible. Bronze tools , weapons , armor , and building materials such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone and copper " Chalcolithic " predecessors.
Initially, bronze was made out of copper and arsenic or from naturally or artificially mixed ores of those metals, forming arsenic bronze. The earliest known arsenic-copper-alloy artifacts come from a Yahya Culture Period V BCE site, at Tal-i-Iblis on the Iranian plateau , and were smelted from native arsenical copper and copper-arsenides, such as algodonite and domeykite. The earliest tin-copper-alloy artifact has been dated to c. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the alloying process could be more easily controlled, and the resulting alloy was stronger and easier to cast.
