Group of arsenical copper tools
Early Bronze Age, about 2700-2200 BC
From the island of Naxos, the Cyclades, Aegean Sea
Heavy-duty carpenters' tools
This group of tools would have been suitable for different
stages of wood-working: the shaft-hole axes were perhaps used for
basic chopping and trimming, and the flat axes and chisels for
finer work. The flat axes and chisels might also have been used as
wedges to split wood into planks.
The tools were made early in the history of metallurgy, when
metal tools were becoming widely available in the Cyclades for the
first time. They are made from arsenical copper; the ore came from
the island of Kythnos. The tools were found on Naxos, in a hoard
that also included four similar pieces now in the National Museum,
Copenhagen.
It is not clear whether the hoard was a dedication, the stock of
a trader, or the working tools of a craftsman. It seems possible
that both traders and carpenters might have been itinerant, taking
tools with them. These tools could have been hidden by their owner
in a time of difficulty, and never recovered, or they could have
been dedicated at a shrine or sanctuary. Whichever is the case,
they must have been rare and valuable, representing a good deal of
portable wealth.
J.L. Fitton, Cycladic art, 2nd ed. (London, The British Museum Press, 1999)
J.L. Fitton, '"Esse quam videri": A reconsideration of the Kythnos hoard of early Cycladic tools', American Journal of Archaeol-1, 93 (1989), pp. 31-39