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

in the Aegean. 2 Small copper implements (e.g. small chisels, a small knife, and hooks)
have also turned up in Chalcolithic Cyprus at the end of the fourth millennium BC. 3
Despite these early developments, it is not until the Early Bronze Age (EBA, or third
millennium BC) that metal tools became more widely used and scattered in the Aegean
and eastern Mediterranean. 4 These early forms are simple and typically made of copper
or a mixed alloy, such as arsenical-copper. 5 The soft, malleable nature of copper meant
that EBA copper tools were not durable or very effective in cutting certain materials like
wood and stone. Arsenical-copper improved the strength of metal objects but it, too, was
relatively weak and had to be annealed repeatedly to create hardened cutting edges.
Eventually, annealing made metal objects too brittle and subject to breaking. Tin-bronze
provided a level of strength unavailable with other copper-alloy combinations; its ratio
also enabled greater creativity in devising and diversifying effective tool types. Yet the
regular employment of a standardized tin-copper ratio reflecting true bronze is not
achieved throughout the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean until the LBA. 6
This is not to
say that tin-bronze items are absent from the MBA; they do occur, at varying proportions,
but the probability of tools composed of tin-bronze is higher in the LBA than earlier eras.
The production of metal tools depended upon other factors in addition to the
requisite metal sources. One was the technological skill and general understanding of
metalworking and alloy mixing—that is, the ability to transform raw copper (in its ore
state or processed form) into a desirable object. Even if metallurgy was practiced at one
2
Renfrew 1972, 310-313; Branigan 1974, 97-102; Kayafa 2008, 212-213, Diagram 2.
3
Balthazar 1990, 92-95.
4
Deshayes 1960; Catling 1964, 62-66; Branigan 1968; Branigan 1969; Renfrew 1972, 313-317, 325-332;
Branigan 1974, 21-31, 102ff; Tripathi 1988; 39-52; Philip 1989; Balthazar 1990, 113-265; Müller-Karpe
1994, 28-49.
5
Charles 1967; Renfrew 1972, 314; Branigan 1974, 71-77; Pare 2000, 9.
6
Pare 2000. 9-12.
2