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

mainland and may have aided drilling operations. 425
These accessory pebbles likely occur
in other regions as well, if only they were recognized as such. Other methods for rotating
a drill also existed; some drills were L-shaped, meaning that there was a ready-made
handle to serve as a crank, and historical drills regularly employed a T-shaped handle.
Many drills were inserted into a bone, ivory or wooden haft; with such a handle, one hand
could simultaneously rotate the implement while applying a fair amount of pressure.
The breadth of most solid drill tips is well under 1.0 cm, and so the implement
was used by different crafts that required precision, such as seal carving, bone/ivory
work, and carpentry (Figs. 4.18a, b). Evely noted the drill’s versatility and value by
stating that “the drill, in all its varieties, plays a crucial role in any craft that involved
pegging or jointing, that called for the speedy removal of quite large amounts of ‘excess’
426
material, or that had carved decoration.” Despite the adaptability of drills, the
implements are not overly abundant in the archaeological record (Table 4.18). One
explanation for the low count of metal drills is that chipped stones were effective (and
cheaper) drill bits. 427
Regional total MBA LBA General 2 nd millennium
Crete 26 4 19 3
Mainland 32 1 30 1
Islands 0 - - -
Cyprus 38 5 33 -
Anatolia 28 5 20 3
Syria-Palestine 6 - 4 2
Shipwrecks 2 - 2 -
Total 132 15 108 9
Table 4.18: Solid drill distribution
425 Shaw 2009, 51. On the mainland, examples are known from Tsoungiza, Tiryns (personal
communication with J. C. Wright), and Nichoria (Blitzer 1992, 728-729).
426 Evely 1993, 84.
427 Chipped stone—particularly flint—drill bits were used in seal cutting in the Mesopotamian third
millennium BC. Experimental work demonstrates that chipped stones were effective, but copper drills with
abrasives were necessary when the material to be cut was hard. See Gwinnett and Gorelick 1987, 15-16,
23-24. It is reasonable to assume that chipped stone drills were also used in the second millennium in the
Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.
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