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

only sporadically in burials and workshops. The most important criterion of a structured
tool set is variation. This diversity has three forms: different kinds of tools, multiple
subtypes of a utensil, and variations in size (including minimal and incremental
variation). To identify prospective tool kits, broken and complete utensils from the same
assemblage must be evaluated conjointly. Some partial tools were intentionally altered,
raising the possibility that hoarded, incomplete pieces retained a functional and secondary
purpose. This assertion is a key element in recognizing tool kits in metal accumulations.
The implement kits in hoards were not readily detected in the past because of
explanations that imposed a single theory on an entire assemblage. Tools are the
predominant item in Mediterranean caches, yet they have been undervalued in hoarding
studies.
No single interpretation explains why hoards were deposited. For the most part,
Mediterranean hoards (especially those classified as utilitarian) are collections of metal
objects stored away. Hoards vary greatly in size, probably because their compositions
were formed through gradual accumulation, meaning that objects were added to or
subtracted from an assemblage at any time. Hoarding and storing are natural tendencies
prevalent in all societies, even in our complex modern world. Therefore caution is
warranted when social, economic and historical explanations are applied to metal
depositions. These factors often contributed to a hoard never being recovered, rather than
being the primary reason for their formation.
When contextual information about a deposit is known and well published,
scholars have the opportunity to interpret the distinctive functions of the hoard, both
according to the whole and individual components. Rather than the overreaching theories
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