Overcoming the borders: Transport of stone artifacts for long distances in the Bronze Age Western Anatolia
Abstract
The Bronze Age Mediterranean was interwoven with a network of trade routes. At the crossroads were located centers that benefited from its strategic position. Important commodities that were transported for many kilometers also included raw materials like stone. Hardness and heaviness are some of the most appreciated characteristics of this material. Unfortunately, these properties are also associated with the fact that a great deal of energy must be expended to mine, transport, and process them. To obtain these stone products, costs were often undergone when the very properties of the material were necessary for the proper function of the artifact.
In western Anatolia, the borderland between the Mycenaean and Hittite worlds, were located many of these centers that invested a lot of energy to obtain this raw material. In this presentation, stone finds from the Kaymakçı site, located in the central part of western Anatolia near Lake Marmara, will be presented as a case study. The set of examined artifacts included ground stones, which were studied from a morphological and geological point of view. The raw material of artifacts was examined under a macroscopic scale and in some cases using the kappameter to obtain magnetic susceptibility measurements.
The provenance study revealed new insights into the importance of the stone as a raw material. Most of the rocks used for small stone finds can be found within 5 km of the site, but potential sources of volcanic rocks for grinding stones were located more than 25 kilometers from the site and were transported in some form (raw material, semi-product or final product) for long distances.