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

most assemblages were destined for the furnace. Harding’s description of a foundry
hoard may prove helpful in understanding the fluid nature of these assemblages:
Traditionally, founders’ hoards [are] those that contained broken or miscast objects not
capable of functional use...They are often extremely large and heavy; hoards of hundreds
of objects are not uncommon, and some run into thousands…In this model, when the
smith came on his rounds to a village where he had hidden a stock of metal, he would go
to it to recover what he needed, reburying what was left over at the end of the
operation. 591
Although most Aegean and Cypriot hoards contain metal scrap and debris, one need not
assume that all fragmentary objects were useless or non-functional. Knapp et al. argued
that founders’ hoards imply that objects were collected for “their value as metal, not for
the intrinsic value of the original objects…all items lacking special significance and all
592
being reduced to their lowest common, metal denominator.”
Such specialized and
interpretative nomenclature (e.g. a founder’s hoard) fails to consider the diverse
functionality within an assemblage and does not allow for a multidimensional
interpretation.
Needham recently challenged the binary categorization of hoards (retrievable
utilitarian versus irretrievable non-utilitarian, the latter which is often ceremonial). He
proposed that the character of hoards is intricate and complex, and asserted that some
ceremonial assemblages may be recovered. This proposal acknowledged that a hoard’s
nature can change because of the “flexibility of intention at and after deposition.”
notion of hoard adaptability (its function changing over time) is intriguing, yet
contradicts the established nomenclature given to a cache based on its purpose. 594
593 The
591 Harding 2000, 354-355.
592 Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988, 237.
593 Needham 2001, 275.
594 Harding (2000, 354) observes: “What is less certain is whether such categorization actually assists in
understanding the phenomenon. It is of course based on a modern, ‘economic’ view of the past, on a
‘common-sense’ interpretation of what past finds might have meant to their makers and owners.”
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