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

objects are classified in this study under “small craft” tools rather than as metalworking
tools.
Although whetstones and cold chisels (wide implements with a flanged butt)
could have served metalworking purposes, they were not listed in the database as
metallurgical tools. Whetstones were excluded from the dataset and all chisels were
grouped as carpentry and masonry tools. 214
Whetstones are typically discovered with
metal implements, especially in burial and settlement contexts. They function, like files,
to manipulate certain items, and are especially apt for finishing and retouching the cutting
edges of implements and weapons. Whetstones also act as polishers or rubbers on other
stones, and are not strictly metallurgical in nature.
Thick cold chisels are potential implements for cutting or incising metal.
215 Some
of the marked surfaces on the copper oxhide ingots from Gelidonya and Uluburun are
thought to have been made with cold chisels. 216
As is shown in Chapter 5, metal
instruments could be cut and their shape manipulated. The broken edges of some metal
tools have cut marks, indicating that the objects were struck and severed by a cutting
implement, perhaps a chisel. Like whetstones, cold chisels suggest that other smithing
implements existed, which may be classified in other functional categories.
Hammers present another conundrum in the classification of tool types. Metal
hammers were not limited to metallurgy, for carpentry and masonry activities also
214
For a good assemblage of whetstones, see those from Kommos: Blitzer 1995, 441-447.
215
Catling (1964, 96) identifies cold chisels, however, as potential wedges that aided the “splitting of light
timber.”
216
Numerous Gelidonya ingots were impressed or incised with a sign (Bass 1967, 72-73) and 32 different
marks are found on Uluburun ingots; these incisions were made post-casting, possibly “at some point of
receipt or export rather than at the primary production center or centers” (Pulak 1998, 194-196). This
supposition is supported by a broad, cold chisel (KW 3577) found with some Uluburun ingots; the width of
the chisel blade is comparable to the length of the incisions on the ingots, leading Pulak (1992, 7) to assert
that the wide chisel marked some ingots.
89