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

Messenian smiths, as recorded in the Jn series of Linear B tablets. 149
The regional
consumption patterns of metal farming equipment, presented in this section, bear out their
limited frequency and implied worth.
Metal agricultural tools like hoes or plowshares, sickles and shovels were
basically non-existent in the early second millennium. Only six MBA metal examples are
known from the entire study region (Figs. 3.5a, b). At least on Crete, one may have
expected these tools to have been found, assuming that agricultural activity intensified
under the first palaces. Yet the production of metal farming tools perhaps was a luxury
even for the early palaces. The limited amounts of MBA copper certainly contributed to
the low count of these tools. It would have been wasteful to manufacture large metal
implements, when cheaper wooden and stone alternatives were effective. Metal versions
are found more regularly in the LBA only after tin-bronze became standard throughout
the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean and once metal resources were more prevalent.
The absence of these implements in the MBA is not an issue of archaeological recovery.
For example, Protopalatial Quartier Mu at Mallia is a well preserved and carefully
excavated MBA site with evidence for metalworking, including the production and
consumption of tools.
150
(e.g. molds or castings) does not exist.
Yet metal agricultural equipment or evidence of their production
Once metallic agricultural tools were available in the LBA, they complemented,
but did not replace, the wood and stone versions. Sickle-like blades were made of lithics
well before the introduction of the metal version, and they did not become obsolete when
149 Ventris and Chadwick 1973, 140ff; Uchitel 1990, 195-199; Smith 1993, 171-204; Gillis 1997, 506 note
5. A similar, palatial bronzeworking system may have existed at Knossos as at Pylos; see, Killen 1987, 68-
70.
150 Poursat 1985; Poursat and Olivier 1996.
73