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

mandated a striking implement. Wooden mallets are an option for carpenters and masons,
but the effectiveness of wooden hammers in metalworking is dubious. Stone hammers
were perhaps employed by all industries, especially for masonry but also for
metallurgy. 217 Doumas claimed that the Aegean smiths in the EBA used stone hammer-
axes to manufacture metal sheets and vessels. 218 For classification purposes, metal
hammers are included with smithing tools. Several different metal hammer types were
employed, including sledgehammers, miniature hammers, double-hammers, ax-hammers
and adze-hammers. 219
Large stone hammers or even substantial rocks could have been
serviceable items (and cheaper alternatives to metal versions) within the smith’s tool kit.
Stone hammers were excluded from the dataset, even though they could have been
valuable objects to metal smiths.
The known assortment and quantities of metalworking tools are presented in
Figure 3.13. Metallurgical tool types are split into two general divisions based upon the
thermal conditions that objects encountered. In order to manipulate and control pyro-
technology, implements that created distance between user and fire were indispensable.
Instruments for working with hot materials include tongs, (charcoal) shovels, furnace
spatulas, crucibles, crucible scrapers and molds. “Cold” metallurgical tools are
represented by various hammer forms, anvils/stakes, files, swage blocks, castings, billets,
wedge-like tools, and ingot breakers,
220
217 Stone dressing hammers were used in both Hittite and Mycenaean masonry work. For Anatolian
examples: Boehmer 1972, 218-220, plates LXXXVIII-XC; Boehmer 1979, 55-56, plates XXXIII-XXXIV;
Neve 2002, 93. Thaler 2007, 295. For Greek mainland examples: Wace 1949, 34, 36, 44, 135-136; Loader
1998, 47; Wright 2006, 17 figure 1.4.
218 Doumas 1998, 160.
219 Catling 1964, 99-100.
as well as the aforementioned whetstones and
220 Copper oxhide ingots are found in quarters and halves in addition to wholes. Presumably, oxhide ingots
were always produced in wholes, and so a substantial implement must have cut the thick ingots into the
desired proportions. Heavy duty chisels may have served this purpose, but this is unclear. For the sake of
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