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

hoard on Crete and the Katamachi hoard from Epirus. 559 The practice of storing items in
cloth was obviously employed with the Mesopotamian Kutalla hoard, the items of which
were “tightly packed together” and “deliberately wrapped” since the “fabric is folded
over edges.” 560
In general, cloth casings both protected objects and facilitated recovery.
Studies of hoarding in prehistoric Europe, where thousands of metal assemblages
were created and deposited, provide a background for analyzing Mediterranean hoards.
European caches are ubiquitous and typically appear in river or swamp contexts. 562 These
unusual proveniences and the irretrievable nature of such caches are thought to reflect a
social, often religious and dedicatory, phenomenon. 563 Harding emphasizes the
“enormous quantity of metalwork” in European hoards, which has resulted in one of the
“most discussed, though least understood, aspects of the Bronze Age.” 564 The count of
hoards and sum of objects per assemblage in European contexts is staggering in
comparison to the Mediterranean. 565 The largest Greek LBA hoards are the Tsountas
collection from Mycenae and the Orchomenos cache, each yielding around 100 objects.
For comparison, six Transylvanian hoards yielded 10,000 items collectively, or 1660 on
average. 566
More than 300 LBA hoards from Brittany account for 30,000+ bronzes axes;
559
Mochlos hoard: Soles 2008; Andreadaki-Vlazaki, Rethemiotakis, and Dimopoulou-Rethemiotaki 2008,
85. Katamachi hoard: Vocotopoulou 1972. Hoards are often buried in some sort of capsule; for instance,
Samuel Pepys stashed away his gold and coins in a container (Bradley 1990, 18-19).
560
Moorey 1971, 63-64.
561
See Bradley 1990, 44-73 for a discussion on Neolithic deposits of stone axes in Southern Brittany,
Southern Scandinavia and the British Isles. For a catalog of hoards from Bronze Age Europe, see Hä nsel
and Hä nsel. 1997, 101-232.
562
Hansen 1997.
563
Bradley 1982; Bradley 1985a; Bradley 1985b; Bradley 1990; Harding 2000, 352-368. Taylor 1993;
Needham 2001; Hä nsel 1997; Hansen 1997; Schwenzer 1997.
564
Harding 2000, 352. Also see Hä nsel and Hänsel. 1997, 101-232.
565
Generally, for hoarding in European prehistory, see: Harding 2000, 352-368; Eogan 1983, 3ff; Taylor
1993, 3ff; Hä nsel and Hänsel. 1997.
566
Harding 2000, 356.
561
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