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

composition is necessary because the importance of tools and craft kits within the caches
has not been appreciated. 573
Personal collections, merchants’ goods, smiths’ materials, or ritual/ceremonial
paraphernalia are all potential unifying themes for a hoard. Two broad classifications
regarding purpose have developed in scholarship: utilitarian (non-ceremonial and usually
574
recoverable) and non-utilitarian (often ritualistic and non-retrievable). Examples of
utilitarian, non-ritual hoards include personal, craftsperson, merchant, and foundry
caches. These accumulations, especially the foundry caches, customarily have numerous
tools in addition to signs of metallurgical activity, such as fragmentary copper ingots,
scrap metal, and slag (but no crucibles and tuyères). 575
Hoards that were meant to be inaccessible would qualify as non-utilitarian, a
576
description that includes ritual, votive, and foundation deposits. The deliberate
placement of objects within or under a structure’s foundations served “to ensure
protection, benefaction, fertility, legitimacy or longevity for a particular structure.” 577
Votive collections, which are deposited for deities as thank offerings, occur in various
contexts. 578 Bradley’s criteria for non-utilitarian ritual hoards include specialized
locations, a restricted group of items, and well-preserved objects. 579
573
Bass 1967; Catling 1964; Branigan 1969; Matthäus and Schumacher-Matthäus 1986; Knapp 1988;
Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988; Borgna 1995.
574
Bradley 1990, 10-14; Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988, 236.
575
Bradley 1990, 14, Table 1.
576
Ellis 1968; Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988; Bradley 1990; Harding 2000. The importance of
repossession is made clear by Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly (1988, 241), who state: “intentionality of
deposition is not the key issue…it is the intention to retrieve the material that distinguished between
various types of deposits.”
577
Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988, 237. For discussion about Mesopotamian foundation deposits, see Ellis
1968.
578
For instance, see Hä nsel and Hänsel 1997.
579
Bradley 1990, 14, Table 1.
243