In the article "Man9s first encounters with metallurgy" by T. A. Wertime (4 Dec., p. 1257) the interpretation of the kinds of shading used in Table 1 was printed in reverse order. The correct order. is (i) Bronze. (ii) Smelting and closed mold casting of copper from ores. (iii) Melting and open mold casting of native copper. (iv) Hammering and annealing of native copper. The shading itself is correct. In Table 3, Tell Asmar was erroneously noted as being in Iran; it is located in Iraq.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/146/3649/1257.full.pdf

Man's First Encounters With Metallurgy

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the requisites for a successful chemical characterization study of an archaeological problem The first involves the subject matter For the characterization of highly studied materials, results helpful a project on trade or sources may be expected These would include obsidian, ceramics, flint, and perhaps one or two other materials—such as marble and metals—that contain lead The second involves the problem of access to analytical service There are very few first-class analytical chemists or petrographers who will spend months in the laboratory analyzing an archaeologist's samples out of sheer goodwill Access to analytical equipment and funds to cover costs of use are decisive factors There is no point in comparing effectiveness and costs of various characterization methods if the archaeologist concerned has, in fact, little or no choice Chemical characterization ought to have a bright future in archaeological field studies, especially where problems of origin or exchange are involved The development of new, faster, and broader, more sensitive, and precise analytical techniques, and the reduction of new and existing analytical data to agreed bases of standardization will have the greatest overall impact

Chemical Characterization in Archaeology

The Amuq plain in southeast Turkey is of major importance to the development of Near Eastern cultural sequences. Recent investigations of geoarchaeology, settlement patterns, and individual sites now provide framework for the assessment of the original work by the University of Chicago and Sir Leonard Woolley. Geoarchaeological investigations provide a dynamic contest for the interpretation of settlement patterns and show that sedimentation over the plain has been variable and patchy. The density and patterning of settlement has changed through time, partly in response to changes in the local enviroument, partly as a result of developments in the political cconomy. Excavations at Tells Kurdu and al-Judaidah as well as section-cleaning operations at other sites in the area have started to provide a radiocarhon framework for the original chronology and are filling in gaps in that sequence. At the site of Kurda, approximately 15 hectares in area, domestic and perhaps public architecture are now being defined more coherently than in the first investigations, and the excavations are supplving insights in to a subsistence economy that tapped into a verdant mosaic of local environments.

The Amuq Valley Regional Project, 1995-1998

The external manifestations of ancient trading networks have generally been of greater scholarly concern than the internal needs and systems of the societies which created and participated in them. Both aspects of commercial relations are, however, inextricably linked. Preliminary research supports the idea that much of the movement of luxury goods in Southwest Asia during the third millennium B.C. was generated in response to the specific and unique demands of Sumerian society, and that such commercial enterprises continued under the Akkadian rulers. This hypothesis can be used to explain the distribution of certain metals in the third millennium, notably tin and silver. The sources of the tin used in ancient Southwest Asia have, despite considerable research, remained a mystery for years (see most recently Muhly 1985). Following is a speculative attempt, using archaeological and scientific evidence, to explain the reasons why tin bronze is of limited distribution in Southwest Asia and the eastern Mediterranean during the third millennium. Tin bronze occurs in third millennium contexts in Mesopotamia, the Troad, and central Anatolia, and rarely elsewhere until late in the millennium. Such a pattern of distribution might be explained by the presence of tin deposits in each of these areas, exploited to fill only local needs, but geological research has failed to detect tin ores in any of these places. Since some source of tin was clearly being exploited to supply these areas and because there seems to have been differential access to it, geological presence or absence of tin must not have been a determinative factor. An alternative explanation is here developed by examining the nature of the tin trade and of the entities involved in it.

The metals trade in southwest asia in the third millennium b.c.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/329902/file/563206.pdf

An overview of Mesopotamian bronze metallurgy during the 3rd millennium BC

Examines the composition of some of the earliest metallic tools and other objects found in the Middle East.

Robert J. Braidwood

Papers

Ancient Syrian coppers and bronzes