LiTechAe · Lithic Technology, Social Agency and Cultural Interaction in the Bronze Age Aegean. Percussive stone tools related to stone masonry techniques seen through experimentation and use-wear analysis.

Lithic Technology, Social Agency and Cultural Interaction in the Bronze Age Aegean. Percussive stone tools related to stone masonry techniques seen through experimentation and use-wear analysis.

The LiTechAe project aimed to provide answers to questions concerning technology, social agency, cross-craft interaction and cross-cultural interaction in the Aegean world during the Bronze Age. The study focused on percussive tools and techniques used for cutting and dressing stone in Crete, the Cyclades and mainland Greece in the 2nd millennium B.C. This era saw the rise of the first monumental stone architecture in Europe, first in the palaces of Minoan Crete, later from the 15th c. BC onwards, in the tombs and citadels of the Mycenaean mainland following trends known since the 3rd millennium BC in Egypt and the Near East. The project aimed to investigate to what degree, in which ways and contexts and why percussive stone tools were used compared with bronze tools. Then, on this basis, to assess craft specialization and social organization related to these practices. Monumental stone masonry practices require considerable energy investment and important skilled workforce reflecting a complex social organization. Thus, the project’s results contribute to our historical knowledge of Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean societies of the 2nd millennium BC. They allow for a better understanding of human/environment interactions and the functioning of societies in the past and set a basis for us to reflect on the functioning and the evolution of modern societies in regard with relevant environmental and societal aspects. Focusing on lithic and metal technology and craftmanship, the project contributes to a history of techniques and the assessment of traditional crafts in preindustrial societies more in general. The first objective of the project was to reconstruct the chaînes opératoires of the production and use of stone and bronze percussive tools in the framework of monumental masonry, in other words how these tools were made and used. On the basis of this reconstruction, the efficiency of both stone and bronze tools, as well as the know-how and specialization involved in these operations were to evaluate. Once the above reference data acquired, the aim was to understand the factors which guided the craftsmen’s choices, the social organization set for these operations, as well as eventual influences from other cultures pointing to craftsmen mobility and diffusion of tools and techniques. Up to now results clearly demonstrate, among other, that craftsmen, bronze smiths and stone craftsmen had an in-depth knowledge of materials, both lithic and metal, with which they interacted continuously. Thus, specialisation should not been considered solely on the grounds of technical skills required, but should be mostly seen as an outcome of social organisation. Results of ongoing usewear analysis and the identification of tools, also reveal specific patterns of use of tools and techniques, such as the use of tools in direct thrusting percussion (axes, adzes) and not indirect percussion (chisels struck with hammers) further pointing to communities of practice with Minoan Crete and significant differentations from the neighboring cultures (Egypt, Anatolia) for the regions considered in the study.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union