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

workshops were easier to identify in the archaeological record, metal tool kits might be
recognized more often.
As conveyed in Table 5.1, when a tool occurs in a metal hoard or shipwreck, it is
found normally with another tool. These utensils are more frequent and diverse than those
in other contexts. Deliberately formed implement sets are easy to detect in small hoards.
For instance, the EBA Aegean metal caches exhibit sufficient differences in their tools to
be considered kits. 550 In the MBA, two Cretan collections of implements from
Protopalatial Mallia (Quartier Mu) are interpreted by Poursat as the tool kits of a
carpenter. 551 The hoard from Building A (I9) in Quartier Mu consisted of an ax-adze, a
saw, a drill, and a knife. A similar combination from Building B (IV4) was made up of a
double ax, a saw, a socketed adze, and a mortise chisel. Although several different
workshops were excavated in Quartier Mu, Poursat denied that the existence of these
craft implements in Buildings A and B—separate structures from the workshops—
substantiated a carpentry or masonry workshop at the site, proposing instead that the tools
were compiled and collectively stored on behalf of a craftsperson. 552
The carpenter
hoards from the EBA Aegean and MBA Mallia are readily discernible as tool kits
because the caches are not mixed with unrelated objects. Although many LBA hoards
are decidedly more complex, the basic elements of an implement kit are distinguishable
in those cases. Consequently, an intensive review of tool consumption in hoards and
analogous shipwreck assemblages forms the rest of this chapter.
550 Branigan 1969.
551 Poursat 1985, 119-122.
552 Poursat 1985, 124-125.
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