A number of settlements and other traces of occupation have been identified in the mountainous areas near tin and copper deposits in the Erzgebirge, and some of them excavated. The newly collected evidence seems to suggest that many small sources of metals, both tin and copper, were exploited, the former metal by washing from the river and creek beds. Though these sources were more modest than the British and Spanish tin supply, they seem to have served the Bohemian and Saxon Bronze Age cultures well.