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

molds.” 708 The traveling Gelidonya bronze smith is thought to have performed
“hammering, sharpening and polishing” on board, while quickly constructing stone and
clay furnaces at ports of call. 709 Cyprus was one of the last stops for the Gelidonya
bronze smith; he acquired most of the scrap-like agricultural equipment there, which was
necessary for small-scale metalworking operations. Logic dictates that mobile
craftspersons had to take advantage of available transportation, such as international
merchant ships. It is hardly conceivable that they would have ventured into the unknown
by themselves with limited seafaring skill; rather, they must have depended upon expert
merchants who were already familiar with the sea. This concept of mobility and metal
smiths has been explored in other ways as well. For instance, Catling proposed that the
Cypriot Mathiati hoard was deposited by an itinerant craftsperson who established a
temporary space at the site. 710 Bass likewise argued that the Mycenaean metal industry
relied either on imported foreign scrap metal or traveling artisans for bronze objects. 711
Further discussion on the mobility of craftspersons and their relation to hoarded metals
from shipwrecks and land is provided in the concluding chapter.
VI. Conclusions about tool kits
Despite a gap in scholarship pertaining to metal tool kits, distinctive implement
groupings in the second millennium seem, on the basis of the preceding analysis, a
reality. By and large, these deliberate tool series appear in hoards and shipwrecks and
708 Bass 1967, 163-164.
709 Bass 1967, 163-164.
710 Catling (1964, 302) asserts that the Mathiati tools reflect craft mobility: “The Mathiati hoard suggests an
itinerant craftsman who set up a temporary foundry and smithy at the settlements he visited, rather than a
local industry.”
711 Bass 1967, 121: “Most of the objects found at Gelidonya and in Greek hoards, on the other hand, were
broken, and there is nothing to suggest that Mycenaean Greece imported complete bronze implements in
any quantity. It seems, rather, that Greece preferred to buy only raw materials and scrap metal for their own
smiths or for itinerant craftsmen who would cast objects to suit Mycenaean tastes.”
303