Oxhide Ingots, Copper Production and the Mediterranean Trade in Copper and Other Metals in the Bronze Age
Michael Rice Jones
Thesis: May 2007
Chair: Pulak
The production and trade in copper and bronze was one
of the major features of the complex societies in the Near East and
Mediterranean during the third to first millennia B.C. While finished
metal objects are common finds from the period, ancient metal ingots
and hoards of scrap metal, as well as archaeological evidence of
metallurgical activities, are often more important sources of
information for how ancient technology and trade functioned.
Shipwrecks, particularly those found off the coast of Turkey at
Uluburun and Cape Gelidonya, as well as mining and smelting sites in
the Mediterranean region, provide invaluable information on the
production and trade of copper and tin, the main ingredients of bronze.
In this thesis, I examine the evolution of the copper trade in the
eastern and central Mediterranean, particularly during the Late Bronze
Age, when
‘oxhide’
ingots were widely exported. Finds of oxhide ingots have increased
dramatically in recent years, and no synthesis of all of this newly
available evidence is currently available. I attempt to analyze this
new evidence in relation to older finds and research, with a particular
focus on the cargo of the Uluburun shipwreck, the largest collection of
Bronze Age metal ingots from a single site in the Mediterranean. The
history of oxhide ingot production is complex, but by the Late Bronze
Age Cyprus was supplying much of the copper used to neighboring
regions, with revolutionary effects on societies in Cyprus and
elsewhere. The archaeological evidence shows that oxhide ingots are
early examples of a standardized industrial product made for export by
emerging state-level societies during the second millennium B.C. and
fueled the development of international trade, metallurgical
technology, and complex social institutions in a variety of
Mediterranean societies from Egypt and the Levant, Greece, Cyprus, to
Sardinia in the central Mediterranean.