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

een easier with metal tools than stone versions. Aside from dressing hammers and
rubbing stones, stone implements are improbable devices for fashioning finely cut
masonry blocks. 7 Production of ashlar masonry and orthostate blocks required the cutting
efficiency and precision that metal tools offered; these masonry types are produced
throughout the second millennium in the Aegean, Cyprus, Anatolia and Levant. Thus the
evolution of metal tools and architecture was intricately associated, and each industry
likely drove the progression of the other. Despite the importance of metal tools to
architecture, there may be some uncertainty about what type of implement fashioned a
block. Shaw, for instance, notes the finely cut masonry in the Minoan palaces were
produced more often with bronze chisels than by saws, the latter being the traditional
interpretation. 8
Given the strong correlation between the evolution of metal tools and
architecture—specifically the need for metal implements in forming smoothly surfaced,
often elite, masonry—it should not be a surprise that carpentry/masonry implements are
the most common MBA and LBA tool types. Because of the popularity of these wood-
and stone-working tools, a detailed investigation of their distribution, function, type, and
place of deposition represents a major portion of this investigation. Although the
construction of monumental and elite public architecture with cut stone spread
throughout the area under study from the 18 th through 12 th centuries BC, it is unclear how
much impact one culture had on a neighboring one. With the association of tools and
architecture in mind, this study examines the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean/
7 For the importance of hammer dressing (often with stone hammers) in Mycenaean and Hittite
architecture, see: Wace 1949, 135-136; Mylonas 1966, 16-18; Boehmer 1972, 218-220, plates LXXXVIII-
XC; Wright 1978; Boehmer 1979, 55-56, plates XXXIII-XXXIV; Loader 1998, 47; Neve 2002, 93.
8 Shaw 2009, 46-47.
4