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

patterns occur despite the fact that metal consumption was much higher in the later
period—evident in part by the number of metal tools in each period (Fig. 3.1a, b). How is
it possible that MH metalworking tools are more frequent in their assemblage than LH
examples? Evidence for MH period is poor in the number of preserved metal objects, yet
traces of its meager, indigenous, metallurgical industry are evident. The MH metallurgy
is represented by a few molds, crucibles and foundries. Iakovidis interprets this evidence
as “an indigenous and widespread [MH] metal industry, operating from Thessaly to the
Peloponnese and practiced by local smiths working on their own and for their small
communities.” 222 Despite the remarkable rise in the mainland’s consumption of metal
products from the MBA to LBA, the frequency of smithing tools falls over these
periods. 223
Only 2.4% of the LH tools are identified as metalworking implements (found
in hoards, settlements and burials; Figs. 3.10b; 3.14b), and the absence of Mycenaean
metallurgical workshops in the archaeological record may account for this unexpected
pattern.
Metallurgical activity on the LH mainland is traditionally inferred from numerous
Mycenaean metal hoards, the contents of which are regularly interpreted as recyclable
material. Although these hoards are suggestive of metallurgical activity, the
archaeometallurgical evidence (crucibles, molds, tuyères, bellows, etc.) for pyro-
technological operations is entirely missing from these contexts and the LH mainland in
general. The veritable explosion of finished metal objects on the mainland in the LBA
thus contradicts the scanty evidence for metal workshops and smithing tools.
222 Iakovidis 1982, 213.
223 Iakovidis (1982, 214) notes that, “[p]ractically every LH site in Greece has yielded bronze artifacts.”
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