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

IV. Hoarding and tool kits
IV.A: Hoarding practices and chronological/historical interpretive issues
The geographically limited sources of raw copper and tin sources—as well as the
burdensome nature of mining, smelting, casting, and distributing metals—made tin-
bronze and copper-based objects valuable items to be stockpiled and safeguarded. The
practice of hoarding metals was an interregional and diachronic phenomenon (see hoard
list in Appendix 3). 553
Although numerous social, economic and historical factors have
been cited to explain depositional practices, hoarding is foremost a method to collect and
group together one’s possessions. The reasons for this practice, however, are manifold
and very often unknown.
The term “hoard” is occasionally interchanged with “treasure”, yet the latter is
better reserved for metal assemblages with precious items like gold, silver and jewelry.
Laffineur notes that the terminology of treasure has been problematic and misused.
554 A
hoard represents a collection of stockpiled items that were concealed. Harding offers the
description of “collective finds of whole or fragmentary bronze implements or pieces of
waste and un-cast metal,” but qualifies it by saying that “strictly speaking, any collection
of more than one object that was found together other than in a funerary or domestic
situation can be called a hoard find.” 555
Harding’s definition warrants a slight revision,
for domestic settings are a viable context for the deposition of hoards. Needham’s
553 Harding (2000, 365) in fact concludes that “hoarding was thus the most characteristic Bronze Age
activity in much of Europe.” See Bradley 1990, 17-20, for an account of Samuel Pepys’ diary from 1667.
Pepys buried his money in the ground to safeguard his wealth during the aftermath of the Great Fire of
London. The account is intriguing as Pepys describes his trouble locating the very treasure that he buried.
The story demonstrates the tendency to hoard objects as well as the difficulty in retrieving such deposits.
554 Laffineur 2006, 37-38.
555 Harding 2000, 352; Harding (2000, 353) also states: “hoard finds are those that are demonstrably not
grave-goods and not the in situ residue of a destroyed industrial or domestic site.”
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