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

Isthmia region throughout the historical periods. 74 Excavations at major LBA centers
such as Enkomi (Cyprus) and Tiryns (Argolid) have uncovered numerous stone
implements (chisels, miniature axes, celts, sickles, and other cutting implements) that
verify material plurality within tool assemblages, even within the carpentry/masonry craft
paraphernalia. 75 The perseverance of stone pounders and querns for food preparation is
predictable, but the continued production of stone implements for cutting is
unanticipated, considering the availability of more effective metal utensils. Although
Rosen observes the decline and disappearance of some flint tools (especially axes/celts
and awls/drills) in the Bronze Age Levant, this transitional process is not based solely
upon the metallic advantages: “Other variations, including trade, specialization, and the
nature of the tools being replaced, were at least as significant as the nature of the metals
themselves.” 76 Karimali argues that metal and stone tools must be studied together
because they “were used in a continuum of economic and consumption behavior which
pertained to a set of different but integrated activities.” 77
The ways in which stone and
metal tools were used simultaneously by craftspersons, particularly carpenters and
masons, is unclear. A superficial discussion of stone implements is offered at the end of
Chapter 3, but a full scale investigation exploring these materially-divergent tool forms
and their relationship to the metal types is warranted in a separate study for the future.
Gender roles are poorly investigated within the prehistoric Aegean and eastern
Mediterranean and continue to be so in this study of craft industries.
74
Kardulias 2009.
75
Courtois, Aristidou, and Lanitou 1984; Rahmstorf 2008.
76
Rosen 1984, 504.
77
Karimali 2005, 201-205; Karimali 2008, 317.
78
For a number of articles on gender as seen through the prehistoric record on Cyprus, see Bolger and
Serwint 2002. For a discussion of gender and potters in the Aegean, see Nordquist 1995.
78
The correlation
46