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

The shipwreck tools are divided into categories according to function. The
quantity of wood- and stone-working and utilitarian tools is commensurate between the
wrecks, yet there are significant differences in the selection of agricultural and
metallurgical examples. There are 34 wood- and stone-working tools from Gelidonya and
at least 26 from Uluburun. The actual Uluburun number may be more than 38, since “no
less than a dozen long and slender bronze tools of square and circular sections” have not
been completely conserved or published. 692
The description of these still-encrusted
objects implies that they may be chisels or drills. Each shipwreck has an accumulation of
knives, razors, awls, and whetstones, but the exact number of Uluburun awls is not
reported. Most land hoards have considerably fewer implements than what is found on
these two shipwrecks. The largest caches have a comparably high number of
carpentry/masonry implements, including the Mycenae Tsountas hoard (51
carpentry/masonry tools), the Athens Acropolis hoard (25), the Anthedon hoard (21), the
Orchomenos hoard (28-29), and the Ugarit priest house hoard (41). The matching
preference for tools, mainly carpentry/masonry ones, in land hoards and metal collections
from shipwrecks indicates parallels between the two contexts. The high percentage of
carpentry/masonry implements in either context is explained by the presence of tool kits.
The recognizable trait of the shipwrecks’ wood- and stone-working utensils is the
degree of variation. The Uluburun tools comprise a wide range of types, including double
axes, single/flat axes, shaft-hole axes, lugged/trunnion axes and adzes, several different
chisel types, drills, a saw, and even a plumb bob (Table 5.4).
692 Pulak 1988, 19.
693 Pulak 1988, 17-19; Yalçin, Pulak, and Slotta 2005, 631.
693
The division of the
chisels into four distinct categories (broad, narrow, mortise and cold) and their equal
295