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

industry’s tool repertoire. The brief examination of textile and leather production
illustrates that the tool assemblages for some craft industries are difficult to discern. A
future investigation that focused on minor tools and took ethnographic parallels into
account might clarify the functional craft differences within this category’s assemblage of
vaguely defined yet important implements.
IX. Carpentry/Masonry tools
General trends: The largest category of second millennium metal tools is
carpentry/ masonry implements, with 2253 examples, which is 42.4% of the total dataset
(Fig. 3.4a, b). Quantitatively, there are more than three times as many LBA as MBA
carpentry/masonry tools (Figs. 3.26a, b). Several of the tool types from the MBA and
LBA, particularly various ax forms, were known in the third millennium or earlier.
Copper axes, for instance, were found in Neolithic levels at Sesklo and Knossos. 284 A
number of metal assemblages from the EBA Aegean (northern Aegean, Greek mainland,
Cycladic islands and Crete), identified as carpentry hoards, consisted of copper axes, ax-
adzes and chisels. 285 Therefore, these implements were not introduced for the first time in
the MBA. Carpentry/masonry tools are prominent in several regions during the early
second millennium (Fig. 3.26a, b). Within the Cretan MBA assemblage, 49.7% of the
implements were intended for wood- and stone-working; comparably high percentages
are apparent in Anatolia (43.4%) and Syria-Palestine (83%). 286
The regularity of
construction tools in Crete, Anatolia and Syria-Palestine during the MBA corresponds to
the localities where monumental architecture was just emerging, at least within the study
284 Renfrew 1972, 311.
285 Branigan 1969.
286 The Greek islands also have a high percentage (50%), but this proportion reflects only two tools. It is
impossible to gauge the importance of the carpentry/masonry tools on the early islands since there are so
few tools from them.
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