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

III: The relationship of stone, bone, and metal tools
Future investigations on craft work should appraise the roles of diverse materials
in tool industries. Before evaluating the distribution of metal implements, a quick
overview of stone and bone types is warranted to convey how they relate to metal
versions. Metal implements were strong, sturdy and effective, yet non-metal tools were
consistently manufactured as alternatives to more expensive metal versions. The
difference in efficiency between metal and non-metal tools is hard to determine, but it
was not so great that non-metal tools (made of wood, bone, stone, and even ceramic)
became obsolete. Wooden tools were certainly utilized for agriculture, a point
demonstrated by the ethnographic record. 112
Other than the utilization of large wooden
mallets, metallurgical and carpentry/masonry tasks may not have benefitted from wood
implements.
Bone tools, likewise, are probably too brittle for carpentry and masonry, but they
were serviceable for small craft activities. Evely identified a small selection of bone tools
within Minoan contexts, and the majority of these tools consist of awls, points, punches,
113
and spatulas. Bone implements may be more prevalent than published reports convey,
as these objects could have been misidentified, discarded or simply ignored in old
excavations. Well-excavated and studied artifact assemblages, such as those from Lerna,
record numerous small bone implements. 114
Several different types of bone tools (e.g.
flat, thin points; thick, rounded points; spatula-like items; pins or needles; etc.) were
recovered from MM-LM Kommos, leading to speculation that the site had a bone-
112
Wulff 1966, 267-276; Frank and Miller 2001, 28, 37-38; Polyzoi 2009, 62-63.
113
Evely 1993, 106.
114
Banks 1984 (1967), 263-484.
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