Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern ...

frequency of these tools, however, decreases slightly from the MBA (9.9%) to the LBA
(5.8%). There are 32 undated tools, and their percentage (6.3%) within the general
second millennium collection coincides with the LBA frequency. The intermittent
occurrence of metalworking instruments is partially attributed to problems in
archaeological preservation and to the contexts in which the tools are usually found.
Metallurgical implements are rare in burials and shipwrecks, but common in settlements,
typical of workshops, and occasionally found in hoards (Fig. 3.12).
The implement set associated with metallurgical activity is diverse, reflecting a
multi-stage production process. Evely divided the metallurgical tool kit into three
categories: melting, casting and working. 213
Hearths, crucibles, tongs, withies, blowpipes,
bellows, tuyères and molds are associated with melting and/or casting. The majority of
these items, except for tongs and molds, were excluded from the current dataset since
they are not tools according to the definition outlined for this particular study. The range
of equipment for metalworking was great, and the tools reflect only a portion of the items
that were required. In addition to metalworking implements, furnaces or fragments
thereof, bellow pieces, tuyères, and crucibles are essential for staging metallurgical
operations and are well preserved in the archaeological record. The assortment of
implements related to Evely’s “working” stage include: hammers, mallets, punches,
points, drills, chisels, anvils, sinking blocks, tracers, swages and mandrels, stakes and
whetstones. The recognition of punches and points as metallurgical implements is open to
discussion. These small objects could enhance the work of a smith, but an exclusive
metallurgical function cannot be assigned to them. Consequently, diminutive pointed
213 Evely 2000, 326, figure 130.
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