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

this form are unknown in the Aegean and common to Italy, the mold probably arrived in
Mycenae by means of a “traveling smith.” 795 Yet tool kits (see Chapter 5) represent a
better method for tracking cross-cultural relations and craft mobility, because groups of
selected implements reflect craft similarities more so than isolated items. 796 Yet for
regions that boast tool kits, each has its own version that does not appear elsewhere. If
regionally-specific tool kits were ever discovered in multiple areas, those implement sets
would demonstrate the mobility of craftspersons. Mobile artisans, according to
ethnographic and textual sources, travel in small numbers and typically return to their
place of origin following the completion of a commission. 797
For this reason, foreign
implements are unlikely to be present in tool assemblages, making it difficult to
recognize the movement of craftspersons.
The notion of MBA and LBA traveling craftspersons—particularly metal smiths,
carpenters, masons, and painters—is often proposed by scholars to explain craft
similarities in different regions. Yet this sector of society defies recognition in the
798
Aegean due to the region’s limited textual records. In spite of this difficulty, “the
concept of the traveling or migrant craftsperson is embedded in the archaeology of the
Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Greece.” 799
This statement is particularly true when
considering the influence and extent of Minoan masons and carpenters in the Cyclades,
Greek mainland, and eastern Mediterranean.
795
Stubbings 1954b, 298.
796
For the importance of assemblages rather than individual items acting as social markers, see Childe
1956, 121-3; Dabney 1989, 139-150.
797
Helms 1993, 33-34.
798
On the possibility of traveling craftsmen in the Aegean, Cline (1995, 266) observed: “although there are
quite a lot of very well known data which can be used in the attempt to identify expatriate Minoans and
Mycenaeans, it has proven rather difficult to actually document this elusive class of people.” The issue is an
old one in scholarship, and is discussed by Persson (1942, 148-149), though this work is by no means the
earliest to address the topic.
799
Muhly 2005, 685.
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