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

cannot always aid functional interpretations. Metal styli, for example, were found in the
textile workshops at Kition-Kathari, yet it is unclear whether these slender, pointed
objects served as weaving implements or tools for documenting the craft industry’s
transactions. 263 The possibility of Late Cypriot metal styli—though bone tools surely
would have worked as well—is confirmed by several awl-like tools from various contexts
that have been re-identified as styli. 264
The total volume of metal preserved within this category is meager. There are 737
small craft tools listed in the dataset, which represents 13.9% of the second millennium
metal tools (Fig. 3.4a, b). Each of these implements is light, and so the cumulative
amount of bronze consumed by the tool category was minimal. There are four times as
many small craft implements in the LBA than in the previous period (526 vs. 129
examples), yet the proportion of these tools increased marginally from 10 to 15% over
the same period (Fig. 3.21a, b). Once again, patterns in the Aegean differed notably from
those in Cyprus and Anatolia. Although greater quantities of small craft tools existed in
the Aegean LBA than the MBA, the frequencies of these tools decreased over time within
each Aegean area (Fig. 3.21a, b). The meager Syro-Palestinian data for this tool category
also revealed a declining percentage in the LBA. An entirely different pattern appeared
on Cyprus and Anatolia, which is reminiscent of the utilitarian objects from those
regions. LC small craft objects were twice as frequent as in the previous period, while the
proportion of the LBA Anatolian tools tripled that of the MBA. By examining the
utilitarian and small craft tools concurrently, it becomes clear that the Aegean selected
these tool categories very differently than their eastern neighbors. The high occurrence of
263 Smith 2009, 37.
264 Papasavvas 2003.
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