The Cutting Edge

A New Look at Early Aegean Metallurgy

Abstract

Metal has long been awarded a central role in the emergence of complex societies in the Aegean Bronze Age. It is suggested in this paper that the prominent position of metal in the archaeological record of the Early Bronze Age of southern and insular Greece in particular is the manifestation of deliberate social strategies in the past, whose attainment was not so much the invention as the transformation of an existing medium through the imposition of radically different production and deposition mechanisms. The Early Bronze Age use of metal is contrasted with the increasing evidence for patterning in metal use in the later phases of the Aegean Neolithic. Finally, a diachronic model is suggested linking the contrasting modes of production and consumption of metal.