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

compass. In addition to these carpentry/masonry items, other utensils from the site
include thirteen awls/points/punches, four knives and a pair of tongs or tweezers. The
assortment of these implements came from the second floor of the building. Together
with metallurgical debris and scrap pieces, the tools confirm the existence of a bronze
smith’s shop. This work area “was solely concerned with making finished goods from
supplies of copper and/or bronze, or as scrap metal which it recycled.” 548
Thus the
carpentry/masonry tools were, oddly, considered components of a smith’s kit:
…heavy chisels [were] for breaking up scrap metal, drills, punches and awls for working
sheet metal, tiny tracers for decorating sheet metal, small points and little chisels for
working over the wax cartoons used in cire perdue casting. The pincers/tweezers could
have been used to handle the very small crucibles or for manipulating hot charcoal in an
549
annealing furnace.
This interpretation fails to account for the drills, saws, double axes, and drawing compass
from the site. Numerous carpentry/masonry implements are broken, seemingly part of a
heap of scrap to be recycled, but complete tools are also preserved, including one drill
and one double ax. The probability of the Unexplored Mansion’s metal assemblage
constituting a tool kit is perhaps best substantiated by its series of chisels. At least four
different types are recognizable, including a massive elongated chisel (42 cm long) with a
broad cutting edge, mortise chisels, a short broad chisel, and short narrow chisels.
Unquestionably, a range of diverse tasks warranted these specialized subtypes, and the
occurrence of the chisel types in one context is indicative of a tool set. It is unclear if this
kit belonged to a carpenter/mason and was accidentally placed in a smith’s workshop or
if it was really the kit of a smith, as suggested by Catling and Catling. The findings from
the Unexplored Mansion reveal workshops as a useful context for yielding tool kits. If
548 Catling and Catling 1984, 207.
549 Catling and Catling 1984, 205-206.
237