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

consumer. Cretan carpentry/masonry implements, in fact, are relatively well distributed
across the island. Minoan consumption patterns imply that more tools were in circulation
and that implements were generally easier to acquire. Alternatively, the tool distributions
may imply that craftspersons were more widely dispersed and not concentrated at
particular centers; such a pattern may be expected in a peer-polity arrangement, like the
one on Neopalatial Crete. The tool distributions outside Crete are significantly more
restricted. For instance, Cypriot tools seem to have been stockpiled chiefly at one site:
Enkomi. Such patterns may result from differing levels archaeological investigation and
preservation from site-to-site. On the other hand, genuine social and craft arrangements
may have governed each site’s selection of tools.
Sites from the Cretan MBA:
Middle Minoan carpentry/masonry tools are divided among eight sites (Table
4.20). These implements are best represented by findings at Mallia and Palaikastro, even
though very little of Protopalatial Palaikastro has been exposed. These two settlements
are situated on the island’s coast, which facilitated the acquisition of early imported
metals and subsequent metallurgical activity such as tool production. 498 Recent lead
isotope analysis of metal objects from Mallia, including fragments of raw materials,
shows that copper at Quartier Mu came from a number of different sources, specifically
Anatolia, Cyprus and an unknown Near Eastern source. 499
The impressive quantity (and
diversity) of the MM Mallia tools is attributed to the site’s well- preserved Protopalatial
structures and contexts, but also to the fact that Mallia was a center of construction
activity as indicated by the sophisticated buildings at the site. The supposition of skilled
498
Metal tool production occurred at Quartier Mu: Poursat and Olivier 1996, 53-56, entry C23, plate 52d.
499
Poursat and Loubet 2005, 118-120.
196