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

other implements prevalent in Anatolia and the eastern Mediterranean (single/flat axes
and adzes, shaft-hole axes, and trunnion/lugged adzes or axes).
There is a significant disparity in the types and numbers of agricultural and
metallurgical implements from Uluburun and Gelidonya. There are 102 agricultural tools
from Gelidonya and only 8 from Uluburun. Of the impressive Gelidonya assortment of
sickles, picks, hoes/plowshares, a mattock and pruning hooks, all were common to
Cypriot hoards except for the mattock. Sickles were consistently hoarded in the Aegean,
but agricultural implements, in general, were more prominent in the eastern
Mediterranean. The Gelidonya examples (chiefly 47 picks and 49 hoes/plowshares)
include fragmented and supposedly unusable items, which are thought to have been
valued as scrap by an itinerant bronze smith on the vessel. 696
The purpose of the intact
shipwreck agricultural utensils (or any fragment that was still functional) is obscure. Bass
asserted that complete Gelidonya pieces were serviceable for scavenging activities on
land whenever the ship came to harbor.
When the scrap-like agricultural tools are considered with the metallurgical tools
on board, Bass’ interpretation of a traveling metal smith appears reasonable.
697 Other
evidence for metalworking at Gelidonya consists of unfinished castings, casting waste,
unidentifiable scrap metal, and numerous stone balance weights, not to mention the
oxhide ingots. Although the Uluburun vessel held nearly ten times as many ingots,
indisputable metallurgical evidence from that ship is lacking aside from a pair of tongs
and metal or stone weights. 698
Tongs were part of the smith kits from the Enkomi
696
Bass 1967.
697
Bass 1967, 163.
698
Pulak (1988, 20) notes that the Uluburun tongs have broad shoulders, which are also found in Cyprus,
Syria-Palestine, Sardinia and Iran.
299