ABSTRACT
The quantitative distribution of material evidence for the bronzeworking industries of the Near East in the Iron Age is strikingly disparate, as indeed is the extent of related study. The production of copper and copper-alloys in Western Asia, as in China and Europe, apparently reached a peak after the Iron Age was well under way. As decoration or decorative effect became a major feature of bronzeworking, its creators would have been drawn into an even closer relationship with other applied crafts in any one production centre. Cast bronzework is intimately linked to sculpture and to modelling in clay; decorated sheetmetal, when engraved or incised, uses the techniques of line drawing, when embossed those of the sculptor again to some extent. The bronzeworking centres of Western Asia in the mature Iron Age were an aspect of complex craft interrelationships within a great variety of functioning societies.
