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

Although hoard findings may reflect social behavior, it is too simplistic to assign a
unified purpose to most caches. 595 Attempts should be made to identify the sundry social
practices behind hoarding, as implied by Knapp et al.: “the attempt to isolate a single
behavioral pattern…is misleading, if not spurious.” 596
A hoard’s array of items (tools,
weapons, ornaments, vessel fragments, scrap metal, slag, etc.) has been considered
unrelated, thus leading to the conclusion that metallic value was the only connective
element within an assemblage. When scholars identify a single reason for the structure of
a hoard, the relationship among a cache’s components is overlooked.
Prehistoric hoards from southern Britain “could fulfill a variety of functions,” and
the same could be said for the LBA assemblages in the Mediterranean.
597 Consideration
of a hoard’s multi-functional nature enables archaeologists to analyze a hoard’s
composition, variation, and how it relates to other hoards rather than forcing an
overarching interpretation on the entire assemblage. Harding echoes this sentiment: “it is
likely that no single explanation [for hoards] will account for more than a proportion of
the finds.” 598 He recognizes the “internal diversity” of hoards, the fruitless nature of all-
encompassing interpretations, and how caches in Europe provide “good evidence for the
existence of structuring principles in the process of deposition.” 599
Harding’s emphasis
on the organization and deliberate composition of European hoards serves as a
constructive guideline for the Mediterranean examples.
Questions relating to the formation of Mediterranean assemblages have generally
been overlooked. Yet patterns within hoard compositions reveal that metal items were
595 Chapman 2000, 46.
596 Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988, 240.
597 Taylor 1993, 104.
598 Harding 2000, 352.
599 Harding 2000, 354, 368.
247