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

the ability to cut stone and wood in the second millennium was a task probably reserved
for metal tools. Stone axes, adzes and chisels are attested from LBA tool contexts, but the
effectiveness of these objects in the carpentry and masonry industries is not clear.
Although obsidian blades were sharp enough to whittle wood, they may not have been
the favored tools of carpenters. The enhanced cutting capabilities that metal utensils
offered partially accounts for the rapid development of carpentry and masonry industries
during the second millennium BC.
IV. General patterns of metal tools in the second millennium BC
Metal tools are produced as early as the Final Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods
in Greece and Cyprus respectively, yet these regional metallurgical developments lagged
behind those in Anatolia and the Near East. The earliest metallic objects consisted of
small trinkets and utensils, such as pins and needles, rather than larger tools. Although
tin-bronze occurs sporadically in contexts from the third millennium Aegean and eastern
Mediterranean, arsenical copper dominated metallurgical technology in the EBA. Tin-
bronze is prevalent in the early second millennium, yet arsenical bronze and other
copper-alloys were also employed. Pare argues that the Aegean’s full transition to tin-
bronze occurred only in the mid-second millennium, between 1600 and 1400 BC. 134 The
prevalence of tin-bronze in the LBA resulted in a greater availability and enhanced
repertoire of metal tools. Stone implements, however, were not entirely abandoned in
favor of metal versions. Lithic production continued throughout the Bronze Age (and
even into historical periods), despite the pervasiveness of bronze tools. 135
134 Pare 2000, 26 figure 1.14.
135 This is evident at Lerna, as noted by Hartenberger and Runnels 2001, 280: “It was long an axiom of
archaeology that flintknapping and stone-tool use gradually faded away when bronze tools and edged
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