The currently accepted narrative on the prehistory of bronze alloying technology follows deterministic, outdated assumptions of technological progression that ignore the role of contextual and performance factors in the decision-making processes, thus neglecting human agency. In essence, it is expected that newer techniques were overarchingly more advanced than older ones and hence replaced them. The validity of this narrative should be challenged and revised. A critical analysis of worldwide literature exposed that, contrary to predictions of the accepted theory, (1) the oldest alloying techniques persisted for centuries after newer ones were invented, and (2) several techniques usually coexisted in the same contexts. We hypothesised that these counterintuitive findings could be explained by differences in performance between techniques, (dis)advantageous at different settings. To obtain empirical information on the performance of techniques and test for behaviourally relevant performance differences between them, a series of alloying experiments were conducted. The results show that all techniques can produce objects of broadly equivalent quality while offering different trade-offs during production. Therefore, every technique—or a combination—can be advantageous under certain conditions, and there are no grounds to support a linear trajectory of substitution. These results debunk the traditional narrative and predict that co-smelting and cementation techniques were more frequently practiced in the past than hitherto assumed. Our propositions prompt a readjustment of explanatory models of bronze production organisation, trade, and consumption while opening unexplored research paths for archaeology and the history of technology.

目前公认的关于青铜合金技术史前史的叙述遵循确定性的、过时的技术进步假设，忽略了决策过程中背景和性能因素的作用，从而忽视了人类的能动性。从本质上讲，预计较新的技术总体上比较旧的技术更先进，因此会取代它们。这种叙述的有效性应该受到质疑和修改。对世界文献的批判性分析表明，与公认理论的预测相反，（1）最古老的合金技术在新技术发明后仍持续了几个世纪，（2）几种技术通常在相同的背景下共存。我们假设这些违反直觉的发现可以用技术之间的性能差异来解释，在不同的环境下有（不利）优势。为了获得有关技术性能的经验信息并测试它们之间行为相关的性能差异，进行了一系列合金化实验。结果表明，所有技术都可以生产出质量大致相同的物体，同时在生产过程中提供不同的权衡。因此，每种技术或组合在某些条件下都可能是有利的，并且没有理由支持线性替代轨迹。这些结果揭穿了传统的叙述，并预测过去共熔炼和胶结技术的应用比迄今为止的假设更为频繁。我们的主张促进了青铜生产组织、贸易和消费的解释模型的重新调整，同时为考古学和技术史开辟了未探索的研究路径。