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

this observation is astonishing since the number of LH metal tools was twelve times
greater than the MH repertoire. The lack of Mycenaean metallurgical workshops is
difficult to explain and future excavations will likely rectify the imbalanced picture, but
one must consider the possibility that a large percentage of Mycenaean metal objects
were produced at a location other than the mainland—though this suggestion does not
coincide with the evidence from the Linear B texts. The evidence for metallurgy on the
LBA islands is equally sparse, and it is clear that Crete has the best preserved assemblage
of metalworking remains in the LBA Aegean.
These second millennium metallurgical trends help to contextualize the
distribution of implements. Understanding where metal was produced and at what scale
may illustrate the significance of certain regional patterns of tool consumption. It is this
topic—assessing the meaning of how metal tools were consumed over a long period of
time and a wide area—that provides a central research focus to the current study.
III. Investigating local and interregional trends in the distribution of tools
Contact and connections among the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean and Near East
during the second millennium BC was considerable, especially during the LBA. Textual
records bespeak of high level state-to-state commerce, corroborated in the archaeological
record by distributions of luxury items and raw materials like copper oxhide ingots. 20
the absence of textual sources, studies about the exchange of commodities—either bulk
items or luxury/prestige ones—is a typical method for assessing cross-cultural relations.
The approach of the present study is to evaluate the degree of pre- and proto-historic
interaction among multiple regions through the lens of metal tools, items that were
20 Moran 1992; Feldman 1996; Gale 1991; Lo Schiavo et al. 2009.
In
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