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

IV.E: Tool kits as an organizing agent in the formation of a metal hoard
The variety of implements and the recurrence of tools from assemblage to
assemblage indicate that tool sets were stockpiled on a regular basis. When the
interpretation of hoard compositions is oversimplified, tool kits are not recognized.
Previous understandings of hoarding have asserted that tools were stockpiled with strictly
market-based objectives, i.e. for their metallurgical value alone without any consideration
for the functional role they might play in a set. 652
It is asserted here that hoard
implements retained functional worth and that metal assemblages were formed for a
multitude of reasons.
The second millennium hoards from the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean
represent collections of objects that were stored away (at least for the caches that were
utilitarian in nature). Hoards were probably formed over time and not necessarily through
a single act of deposition, though that was also plausible. The formation of a hoard while
in storage would have been through gradual accumulation, whereby the hoard owner
added to—or took from—the assemblage at any time. The wide-ranging assortment of
metal items in hoards may be accounted for under this scenario. Tool kits were stockpiled
in the metal assemblages, and were a primary reason for the prominence of implements in
hoards. One must keep in mind, however, that other criteria were also at play.
Incidences of craft-related tool kits within Mediterranean hoards are presented
below. In the Aegean, a standard tool set is represented by double axes, knives and two
distinct chisel forms: broad and narrow. The repetition of these chisel pairs, indicative of
subtypes, is a strong indicator of tool kits. Cypriot assemblages are characterized by a
wider selection of wood- and stone-working implements and greater quantities of
652 Catling 1964; Knapp, Muhly, and Muhly 1988.
279