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

lacks contextual information or chronological clarity. Scholarship has treated the notions
of hoard construction and the reasons for deposition interchangeably. An assumption
persists that the desire for metal—regardless of an object’s size, shape, function or
quality of preservation—served as the sole factor in the establishment of a hoard. 609
As
was previously argued, singular explanations as to why assemblages were placed
underground are misguided. More focus should be placed upon evaluating the
configuration of the various hoard components. The compositional intricacy of some
hoards suggests that they were deliberately structured and multi-functional and not
haphazardly formed as some believe.
Metal hoards are characterized by some combination of complete and fragmentary
tools, weapons, vessels, copper ingots, castings, weights, balance pans or scales,
statuettes, and scrap/miscellaneous metal. Tools are the preeminent item (815 examples)
in hoards from the regions under study, easily representing the majority of the
accumulated objects. Although weapons are common in mortuary contexts, they are not
stockpiled in caches with the same regularity as tools.
610
Other non-tools add to the
diversity within LBA hoards including complete and fragmentary vessels, scrap pieces,
balance pans, weights, castings, stands, tripods, and tables.
The composition of metal hoards from the Aegean EBA and transitional EBA–
MBA were dictated by wood- and stone-working tools (axes, adzes and chisels). These
implements represent 97.7% of the objects in the early assemblages, which is why the
appellation of a “carpenter’s hoard” is applicable. The absence of smithing utensils,
agricultural tools and weapons in these early copper-based assemblages is conspicuous,
609 Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988, 233.
610 Knapp, Muhly and Muhly 1988, 247 table 4; also the hoard catalogue (Appendix 3) in this study.
252