ABSTRACT

Late Bronze Age studies have to some extent overemphasised culture contact across the Mediterranean, especially with respect to long-distance trade and the search for copper and tin taking place under centralised palatial control and driven by the market for prestige goods. In this international, cosmopolitan world between 1600 and 1200 , travelling craftsmen and ingenious entrepreneurs acted as free agents transmitting ideas and skills, thus echoing Childe’s (1958: 169) idea that smiths, the first European specialists, ‘were not tied to any one patron … or society’. For Childe this mobility was responsible for the distinctive character of European Bronze Age metallurgy. Iron objects made of meteoric iron as well as smelted iron are found in many contexts and places from Mesopotamia to Syria, Anatolia, Egypt and Greece. Iron objects also appear in inventories and other Late Bronze Age texts and, despite debates over their meaning, they are quite informative about the trade and use of iron. ˆese texts rarely refer to the manufacture or production of iron, with the exception of the letter of the Hittite king Hattusili around 1250 , which indirectly refers to smelting (for a summary see Pleiner 1969; Muhly 1980). In all cases, iron in the Late Bronze Age seems to be exotic, prestigious and the metal of choice for rituals; a politically centralised system facilitated and supported access to raw materials, technology and specialised workshops (Sherratt and Sherratt 2002).