8
Metallurgy and metalwork at Enkomi
—revisiting Porphyrios Dikaios’
excavations
Vasiliki Kassianidou
Introduction*
Enkomi is without doubt the most important Late Cypriot (hereafter LC) setlement
in Cyprus. There are many reasons, among which are the following:
1. Enkomi, unlike most LC sites, has a long history that spans the whole of the Late
Bronze Age (hereafter LBA). Dikaios (1971: 499) placed its foundation in Middle
Cypriot III (ca 1725–1600 BC). Crewe (2007: 75), however, dates the earliest phase of
occupation to LC IA (ca 1650–1550 BC). Parts of the site were still occupied in LC IIIB
(early 11th century BC) (Dikaios 1971: 494). This means that Enkomi was inhabited
for more than 500 years.
2. It is the most extensively excavated setlement of this period (which may in part be
the reason for some of the points that follow).
3. Enkomi has produced the highest number of writen documents (Ferrara 2012: 20),
the earliest Cypro-Minoan tablet (Ferrara 2012: 53, Tablet 1885) and the longest texts
in the Cypro-Minoan script (Olivier 2007: 282–383). According to Olivier (Morpugo
Davies & Olivier 2012: 106), the three fragmentary tablets from Enkomi ‘…together
have some 2000 signs, i.e. slightly less than half of the whole Cypriot syllabic corpus
of the second millennium’.
4. Enkomi has produced the highest number of cylinder seals, some of which date to
the earliest phase of occupation (Webb & Weingarten 2012: 87).
5. In Tomb 93, excavated in 1896 by the British Museum (Murray et al. 1900: 5; see also
htp://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/
ancient_cyprus_british_museum/enkomi/introduction.aspx), more than 800g of gold
were recovered. After 120 years and the excavation of many other tombs, this remains
the largest quantity of gold to be found in a LC mortuary context (Keswani 2004: 126).
6. Enkomi is the only excavated LC site where complete oxhide ingots have been
recovered (Kassianidou 2009: 43). The only example to be found during excavation
was uncovered by the British Museum in 1897 (Murray et al. 1900: 16–17; Kassianidou
2009: 43). In the 1930s two more oxhide ingots appeared on the antiquities market in
Famagusta and they, too, are believed to have come from Enkomi (see below). One
* I would like to thank Giorgos Bourogiannis and Christian Mühlenbock for inviting me to
participate in the conference and giving me the opportunity to visit the Medelhavsmuseet
in Stockholm for the irst time. It was a pleasure to be able to present the preliminary
results of our project in Sweden where the foundations of Cypriot archaeology were set.
Thanks are also due to Jennifer Webb for her editorial work.
Excerpt from SIMA PB184, Ancient Cyprus today.
© 2016 Vasiliki Kassianidou and Astrom Editions Ltd.
ISBN 978-91-7081-217-0.
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8. Vasiliki Kassianidou
was bought by Harvey Mudd, the owner of the Cyprus Mines Corporation (Lavender
1962) and is now in Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California (Muhly et al.
1980: 92; Muhly 2005: 139; Kassianidou 2009: 43). The second was acquired by the
Department of Antiquities (1939/VI-20/4). With a weight of 39.18kg, the ingot in the
Cyprus Museum is one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest, example known.
7. Excavations at Enkomi have also brought to light the highest number of miniature
oxhide ingots (Papasavvas 2009: 102; Giumlia Mair et al. 2011: 12).
8. Excavations at Enkomi have produced the highest number of copper alloy objects
from any LC site. Dikaios lists over 230 (Dikaios 1971), while Pilides (2012: 88), who
compiled the evidence from tombs excavated by the British Museum, the Swedish
Cyprus Expedition, the Department of Antiquities and the French Mission, reports
309 published objects—by contrast there are only 66 published copper alloy objects
from contemporary tombs at Kition (Pilides 2012: 91).
9. Among the copper alloy artefacts from Enkomi, two are unsurpassed in
technological excellence, iconographic originality, size and weight (Papasavvas 2011:
59; 2013: 173). They are, of course, the statuetes of the Ingot God and Horned God.
10. Last but not least, excavations at Enkomi brought to light a series of metallurgical
or metalworking workshops throughout the site. They remain the most extensive
workshops excavated on the island. Furthermore, they span the whole history of
habitation, ofering a rare opportunity to study LC copper metallurgy diachronically.
These workshops and the archaeometallurgical assemblage from Enkomi form the
subject of this paper.
History of research on the archaeometallurgy of Enkomi
Enkomi was irst investigated at the end of the 19th century by the British Museum.
The team was mainly interested in the extremely rich tombs. They uncovered,
however, the so-called Foundry Hoard which, as well as the complete ingot mentioned
above, comprised ingot fragments, scrap metal including casting jets, and a full set of
smithing tools (Murray et al. 1900: 15–17; Catling 1964: 278–281). In other words, from
the very beginning, even before the excavators realised they were excavating a LC
setlement (Murray et al. 1900: 3), the remains of a metallurgical workshop came to
light at Enkomi.
Yet it was not until 1934, when a French team led by Claude Schaefer began
excavations at the site, that the true nature and importance of Enkomi were recognised
(Schaefer 1936: 68). Schaefer’s excavations were interrupted by the Second World
War and resumed in 1946. At that time he invited the Department of Antiquities to
collaborate by excavating pre-determined sections of the city (Schaefer 1952: vii).
This task was assigned to Porphyrios Dikaios, then curator of the Cyprus Museum,
who began working in 1948 and conducted 12 seasons of excavations over the next
ten years (Dikaios 1969a: 1). He excavated in three rather restricted areas. This was,
however, a fortunate circumstance. As he was unable to expand horizontally, Dikaios
extended his excavation vertically, reaching the earliest phases of occupation. In
Areas I and II, in the central part of the town, Dikaios uncovered the Ashlar Building
and the sanctuary of the Horned God. In Area III, on the northern edge of the town,
he discovered the remains of metallurgical workshops which to this day remain
unsurpassed in their extent and the variety and quality of their inds.
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8. Metallurgy and metalwork at Enkomi—revisiting Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations
Metallurgical workshops were also uncovered in other parts of the city by the
French Mission (Courtois 1982; Lagarce & Lagarce 1986), who continued to excavate
until the Turkish invasion of the island in 1974 (Courtois 1986: 1). Unfortunately,
apart from the artefacts stored in the Cyprus Museum, almost all of the metallurgical
assemblage from the French Mission, including half an oxhide ingot (Lagarce &
Lagarce 1986), was deposited in the storerooms of the mission in Enkomi and its
whereabouts since 1974 are unknown.
The metallurgical workshops and archaeometallurgical assemblages of Enkomi
have often been discussed (e.g. Courtois 1982; Stech 1982; Tylecote 1982; Lagarce
& Lagarce 1986; Muhly 1989; Pickles & Peltenburg 1998; Kassianidou 2008, 2009,
2012) and samples of slag and some artefacts have been subjected to chemical and
microscopic analysis and Lead Isotope Analysis (Koucky & Steinberg 1974; Tylecote
1982; Muhly et al. 1980; Gale 2011; Giumlia Mair et al. 2011; Hauptmann 2011).
Most scholars who have taken samples and/or writen about the metallurgical
workshops excavated by Dikaios, however, did not systematically study the
assemblage, which is currently housed in over 6,000 trays in three storerooms of
the Department of Antiquities in Larnaca. The only person who tried to do this was
James Muhly. He published a small part of this work in 1989 in an article entitled
‘The organization of the copper industry in Late Bronze Age Cyprus’, which has
since been widely cited. In this article he made the following statement: ‘What is
now needed, what is absolutely essential in order to understand the development of
copper smelting technology at a site such as Enkomi, is a careful study of the stratiied
slags coming from all the major periods of activity at the site’ (Muhly 1989: 305).
Metallurgy and metalwork in Enkomi. A new project
George Papasavvas and I decided to accept this challenge and take a closer look at
the metallurgy and metalwork of Enkomi. We have launched a multidisciplinary
project with a team of collaborators (Andreas Charalambous, Demetrios Ioannides,
Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, Athos Agapiou and Vasiliki Lysandrou), and, with the
kind permission of the Department of Antiquities, started to record and analyse
this important assemblage. In this paper I present the aims of this project and some
preliminary results (see also Papasavvas 2011; Kassianidou 2012). First, however, I
would like to express my admiration for the work of Porphyrios Dikaios. He carefully
collected and recorded the remains of the metallurgical workshops, including waste
material such as slag, and it is thanks to his meticulous work that we can return to
study the material from Enkomi.
The assemblage can be divided into the following broad categories: 1. technical/
metallurgical ceramics (tuyères, crucibles and furnace fragments), 2. bellows, 3. slag,
4. moulds, 5. raw metal (ingots and ingot fragments) and 6. metal artefacts. One of
the main aims of the project is to create a database which includes all inds within
these categories. The entry for each object includes contextual data, retrieved from
Dikaios’ publications or from the trays in which they are stored (the vast majority
of the material is unpublished), as well as photographs and descriptions, including
dimensions and weight. It is particularly important to record the weight as this
provides an objective way of understanding both the amount of metal used and/or
needed for the production of artefacts and the amount of metal in circulation and
deposited/hoarded/discarded (Hakulin 2016: 583).
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8. Vasiliki Kassianidou
We are also collaborating with Agapiou and Lysandrou to digitise Dikaios’
plans and sections and link the inds database with the spatial data through a
Geographical Information System (GIS) platform. This will allow us to analyse the
spatial organisation of metallurgical activities at Enkomi and to test the hypothesis
proposed by Pickles and Peltenburg (1998: 88), who suggest that there was a
profound change in the way the copper industry at Enkomi was organised during the
LC period. They argue that ‘The Enkomi metalworking dispersion, the emergence of
houses where previously the Fortress stood and the contemporaneous proliferation
of newly established prestigious town houses suggests that the LC IIIA represents
the culmination of a long term trend towards the dissolution of central control
of metals’ (Pickles & Peltenburg 1998: 88–89). They maintain that by LC IIIA there
was a complete shift in copper production from Area III to other central areas of
the city. While this may be true, some caution is needed when drawing conclusions
based solely on Dikaios’ publications. Tuyères may be cited as a case in point. In
the published catalogue (Dikaios 1971) there are 23 inventoried tuyères or tuyère
fragments, of which only ive almost complete examples are illustrated. Our search
through the trays has revealed that there are more well preserved tuyères and many
more fragments. For example, Dikaios (1971: 624) published an elbow tuyère with the
inventory number 1678 (Dikaios 1969b: pl. 153/30). Our search revealed a tray with
the same inventory number which contained 47 fragments of tuyères, including two
well preserved tips of elbow tuyères (Fig. 1).
As pointed out by Pickles and Peltenburg (1998: 88), their work was also hampered
by the relative paucity of Level IA and IB exposures and this is particularly true of the
excavated areas other than Area III. We thus have no way of knowing whether copper
workshops were as widespread in the central parts of Enkomi in the earlier phases of
occupation as they were in the later phases. Our spatial analysis of the metallurgical
inds will enable us to show whether in the earlier phases copper workshops were
indeed limited to Area III while in the later ones they were spread throughout the
city.
In the remainder of this paper I will briely discuss the archaeometallurgical inds
from Dikaios’ excavations.
1. Technical/metallurgical ceramics: tuyères, crucibles and furnace fragments
The quantity and quality of metallurgical ceramics from Dikaios’ excavations are
unprecedented. Muhly examined roughly one-tenth of the trays, cataloguing some
400 fragments of tuyère, concluding, ‘I know of no other Bronze Age site in the
Mediterranean that has produced more than half-a-dozen such objects’ (Muhly 1989:
299). The LC I smelting workshop at Politiko Phorades has now produced a greater
number of almost complete tuyères and fragments (Knapp & Kassianidou 2008:
141). Nevertheless, Muhly’s statement remains true when Enkomi is compared (as
it should be) to contemporary urban centres where metallurgical workshops have
been uncovered. For example, Van Brempt (2016: 235–236) has recorded only two
tuyère fragments from Kalavasos Ayios Dhimitrios, and Ioannides only a handful
from Karageorghis’ excavations at Kition (Ioannides et al. 2016: 557). Even Apliki
Karamallos, situated in the vicinity of the copper mine which is believed to have been
the source of oxhide ingots found all over the Mediterranean (Gale 1999: 111), has
only produced a handful of tuyères (du Plat Taylor 1952: 161; Tylecote 1981: 111, ig.
6). Surprisingly, no tuyère fragments have been found at Alassa, despite the recovery
of a ceramic bellows (Hadjisavvas 2011: 23, ig. 3.2; Kassianidou 2011: 42; Van Brempt
2016: 345).
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8. Metallurgy and metalwork at Enkomi—revisiting Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations
Figure 1. Dikaios published a single tuyère from Inv. 1678 (left) but from the same inventory there
is a tray full of tuyère fragments (right) (photographs V. Kassianidou)
All the tuyères from Enkomi belong to the elbow or bent type (Fig. 1). When tuyères
from the earliest phases of occupation are compared to contemporary examples
from Politiko Phorades, diferences are discernible. Although all exhibit a degree of
slagging, none are in as bad a state as the examples from Phorades (Kassianidou 2012:
102, ig. 10.11). The LC IIC tuyères are also very diferent from the few contemporary
examples from Apliki, which are of a massive size in comparison. I believe that this
is because the tuyères from Enkomi were exposed to lower temperatures, unsuitable
for smelting (which requires temperatures in the order of 1200oC–1300oC) but high
enough to melt gold (m.p. 1064oC), copper (m.p. 1083oC) and bronze (the melting
point of which depends on the amount of tin and may fall as low as 960oC, see
Moorey 1994: 252). Furthermore, bent tuyères are generally associated with melting
or reining rather than smelting (Tylecote 1981: 117). Thus the tuyères from Enkomi
are more likely to have been used to melt metal rather than smelt ores (Kassianidou
2012: 103–104).
A large number of crucible fragments were also recovered in the Area III
workshops. Most have a shallow open shape and rounded base. The best preserved
example, however, is cylindrical (Dikaios 1969a: 58; 1971: 644) and dates to LC IIC
(Fig. 2). It has a diameter of 30cm and a preserved height of 20cm. It is similar in
shape to the Phorades smelting furnaces which, however, would have been larger
and are more than 200 years older. Tylecote (1982: 92) identiied this object as the
lining of a smelting furnace and proposed that it was buried in the ground with a
cylindrical tuyère inserted at an angle through a hole in the wall in order to introduce
a draft of air to the smelting charge (Tylecote 1981: 107, ig. 1). A closer look, however,
reveals that Tylecote’s reconstruction does not correspond with the object. First of
all, the smooth outer surface of the crucible shows that it cannot have been the lining
of a furnace—rather it was free-standing (as argued also for the Phorades furnaces
in Knapp & Kassianidou 2008: 140). Second, the tuyères from this phase are of the
elbow type and not as depicted in Tylecote’s reconstruction. Finally, although there is
a hole, it is too small and irregular to it a tuyère of the type and size used at Enkomi
(Fig. 2 right). It is more likely that the hole was produced when the crucible was
punctured to empty its contents, or when/if it failed and could no longer hold the
molten mass. Clearly the tuyères and the blast of air were introduced from the top
and not from the side.
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8. Vasiliki Kassianidou
Figure 2. The crucible from Enkomi Inv. 1640 (left) and a detail showing the perforation which
clearly could not have ited a tuyère of the size known to have been used at the site (right)
(photographs V. Kassianidou)
All the metallurgical ceramics have been photographed and drawn. With the
permission of the Department of Antiquities, samples have been taken and Ioannides
is carrying out chemical and petrographic analyses. The results will hopefully enable
us to ascertain the processes for which these installations were used and determine
whether copper ores were smelted in these workshops or if copper metal was only
being reined and cast into ingots or alloyed with tin to produce bronze.
2. Bellows
The irst bellows to be found on the island also come from Enkomi, although not
initially identiied as such. The earliest are two limestone pot bellows (Inv. 4543 and
Inv. 4544) from Level IIA (LC IIA–IIB) which Dikaios (1969a: 43) published as stone
moulds but which were later identiied by Davey (1979: 106) as bellows. Their low
height and the fact that they were found as a pair led Davey (1979: 110) to suggest
that they were foot rather than hand operated. Several ceramic pot bellows were
also found at Enkomi, although only one was published by Dikaios (1971: 577) who
identiied it as a crucible (Fig. 3a). It comes from Level IIIA (LC IIIA or LC IIC/later
according to Crewe 2007: 73, table 11.1). The earliest ceramic example is fragmentary
and comes from Level IIB or Level IIIA in Area III (and therefore most probably
dates to LC IIC). The other example comes from Level IIIB and dates to LC IIIA. It
has a handle or bridge which connects the nozzle to the body (Fig. 3b). According
to Davey (pers. comm.) this feature is only encountered in Cypriot bellows, the best
preserved example being that from Alassa mentioned above (Kassianidou 2011). Two
other fragmentary ceramic bellows of this type in the Cyprus Museum which bear no
inventory number are also believed to be from Enkomi.
3. Slag
Slag is the waste product of metallurgical processes which could not be used for
other purposes and usually accumulates in great amounts in areas where workshops
were once active (Bachmann 1982: 9–10). Archaeologists tend to relate slag solely to
the smelting of ores, which is why Dikaios argued that copper was smelted in the
workshops in Area III (e.g. Dikaios 1969a: 18, 21, 38). Slag, however, is also formed
when melting, reining or casting metal (Hauptmann 2014: 92). One should also
bear in mind that visual examination of a piece of slag cannot reveal the metal or
the process which produced it. This can only be done through a microscopic and
chemical analysis (Bachmann 1982: 4; Hauptmann 2014: 91).
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8. Metallurgy and metalwork at Enkomi—revisiting Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations
Figure 3. Two examples of ceramic bellows from Enkomi
a. Inv. 1691 (Ht 22cm) and b. Inv. 2520 (photographs V.
Kassianidou)
The discovery of slag has been at the centre
of discussion on whether or not copper was
produced/smelted in the Enkomi workshops
(Koucky & Steinberg 1974: 177; Stech 1982:
105; Tylecote 1982: 92). Scholars have tried to
understand why ores, or mate or black copper
would have been carried from the ore-bearing
and forested regions of the Troodos all the way
to Enkomi. The closest copper ore deposit is at
Troulli, 27km as the crow lies from Enkomi.
The LC I smelting workshop of Phorades lies
a
at a distance of 63km, while Apliki is 95km to
the east. Dikaios (1969a: 10) was aware of the
issue. He wondered why copper ore could not
have been carried to Enkomi from the Troodos
foothills when in the beginning of the 20th
century ice was carried by donkeys from the
b
mountain top to Nicosia overnight during the
summer, a distance of some 80km.
Bachmann (1982: 5) pointed out the importance of recording the amount/weight
of slag in order to calculate the scale of production. One of our main objectives
was, therefore, to record all the slag in the inventoried material from Enkomi.
Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing whether all the slag found was collected
or only a sample. For example, among the most important metallurgical features
reported by Dikaios (1969a: 61; 1969b: pl. 12.3) is an extensive slag heap, 1m thick at
one end, to the west of the Level IIB building which dates to LC IIC. Yet the slag from
this deposit was not given an inventory number and we have not been able to ind
any trays with slag labelled as coming from this deposit. Dikaios (1971: 661, 662) lists
crucible fragments from the slag dump but these, too, have not been traced. Does this
mean that no slag from the dump was kept or that it was kept elsewhere and is now
lost? In any case we have no record of the amount of slag in this dump. Similarly, slag
was commonly disposed of in wells: in the storerooms there are trays with slag from
eight wells (Wells 1, 9, 11, 16, 25, 26, 35) but there is no way of knowing whether all
the slag was kept or whether the wells were fully excavated.
The total amount of slag from Dikaios’ excavations in the storerooms is just over
207kg. The size of the slag dump, described by Dikaios (1969a: 61) as being 1m thick
and perhaps covering an area of 80m2, suggests that not all of it was collected or/and
kept.
The amount of slag from Enkomi seems very litle when compared to the 3.5 tons
of slag recorded in the primary smelting workshop of Politiko Phorades (Knapp &
Kassianidou 2008: 142), but, as argued elsewhere (Kassianidou 2012: 104), such
a comparison is inappropriate as the nature and function of the two sites were
diferent. The excavations at Kalavasos Ayios Dhimitrios brought to light 150kg of slag
(Van Brempt & Kassianidou 2016: 539), seemingly a comparable amount to that from
Enkomi, but the slag collected from Enkomi is likely to be a fraction of what was once
there. In any case, what can be ascertained is that the quantities of slag are small in
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8. Vasiliki Kassianidou
the earliest phases but increase signiicantly and probably more than can currently
be demonstrated in LC IIC. The fact that there is so litle slag in the earliest phases is
intriguing, because these phases have produced the highest number of near complete
tuyères and crucible fragments. Perhaps slag was not produced in great quantities
because of the type of process carried out—unlike smelting, casting and reining
produce limited amounts of slag. Perhaps the smiths systematically cleared away slag
from their working areas and dumped it elsewhere, as they seem to have done in the
LC IIC period.
The processes that produced slag at Enkomi can only be revealed through detailed
microscopic and chemical analyses. For a conclusive result we must await the study
of the material.
4. Moulds
Dikaios recovered several moulds in Areas I and III. They were made of stone, such
as siliceous limestone and chloritite, but also of ceramic. Buchholz (2003: 119–120)
compiled the evidence from Enkomi but includes the example Dikaios identiied as an
ingot mould (Inv. 4543), which has been shown to be bellows. Of the 14 moulds from
Dikaios’ excavations, ive are for jewellery, reminding us that Enkomi’s workshops
would have included goldsmiths as well as bronzesmiths. The moulds will be studied
in detail and, with the help of GIS, used to locate casting workshops in the city.
5. Raw metal: ingots and ingot fragments
The ingots and ingot fragments from Enkomi have been discussed elsewhere
(Kassianidou 2009: 42–26). In that paper, however, I did not include examples from
Dikaios’ excavations, although in his catalogue he reported four ingot fragments
from Level IIA (LC IIA–IIB) (Dikaios 1971: 634, Inv. 2640). We have since located the
tray with inventory number 2640 where there is a tiny fragment of metal spillage and
a small piece which may be part of an ingot.
I take this opportunity to share an important piece of information on the oxhide
ingots from Enkomi. Of the three complete examples, the one in the Cyprus Museum
and the one in Harvey Mudd College in California are the products of clandestine
excavations probably at Enkomi. The one in California was bought from a dealer
in Famagusta and exported from Cyprus in 1936 (Muhly et al. 1980: 91), while the
one in the Cyprus Museum was acquired in 1939. According to Catling (1964: 268,
no. 3), both were once ‘in the possession of the di Palma collection, Famagusta’.
Merrillees (2014: 418), in a recent paper on George Basil Palma, was able to show that
the oxhide ingot in the Cyprus Museum was donated by Palma. He argues that ‘It
therefore seems quite probable that this ingot was also at one time in the possession
of George Basil Palma who recorded in the list of his antiquities submited to the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, in March 1936 ‘1 Large Talent’ under ‘Silver &
Copper Coins’ and another under ‘Copper Agricultural Implements etc’ (Merrillees
2014: 419). I recently visited members of the family of James Latimer Bruce, who
was the director of the Cyprus Mines Corporation (Lavender 1962) and the author
of an important paper entitled ‘Antiquities in the mines of Cyprus’ (1937), which
was published as an appendix of Volume III of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition. I was
looking for photographs taken by Bruce of the remains of ancient mines. One of his
granddaughters has in her possession several albums with photographs taken by
Bruce during his years in Cyprus (1925–1935). In one of the albums I found on the
same page two photographs taken in the same room: one depicts the oxhide ingot in
Harvey Mudd College and the other the oxhide ingot in the Cyprus Museum. Bruce’s
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8. Metallurgy and metalwork at Enkomi—revisiting Porphyrios Dikaios’ excavations
photographs thus support Merrillees’ argument that the ingots came to the market at
the same time and must have been found together.
6. Metal artefacts
Our project focuses not only on the metallurgical remains but also on the metal
artefacts. New drawings of the Ingot God (Papasavvas 2011: 60) and the oxhide ingot
have been produced. With the collaboration of the Cyprus Institute a 3D model of
the oxhide ingot was created and the data used to produce a copy with 3D printing.
Papasavvas (2011) has published a paper presenting his ideas on the transformation
of the Ingot God with the casting on technique through which a base in the shape
of an ingot was atached to the statuete. We hope to investigate this further using
radiography, which will hopefully reveal how the Ingot God and indeed the Horned
God were produced.
Furthermore, Charalambous has included Enkomi in his diachronic study of
Cypriot metalwork (Charalambous 2016). Using a portable XRF he has analysed
over 200 copper alloy artefacts from Dikaios’ excavations. The results will soon be
published. Suice it to say at this point, that 10% of the assemblage (which includes
scrap metal) contains no tin, while 43.5% has a tin content between 1 and 5%. A
slightly lower percentage, namely 30.5%, has a tin content between 5.1 and 10%,
while 16% has a tin content between 10.1 and 17%.
Concluding remarks
The project is still in its early stages but we hope that once all this work is completed
we will have a much beter understanding of the processes that were taking place
in Enkomi’s workshops, of the organisation of the industry through time and of
Enkomi’s role in the production of copper metal and the trade of Cypriot copper in
the LBA.
Bibliography
Bachmann, H.-G. 1982: The Identiication of Slags from Archaeological Sites (UCL Institute
of Archaeology Occasional Publication 8), London
Bruce, J.L. 1937: Antiquities in the mines of Cyprus, in E. Gjerstad, J. Lindros, E.
Sjöqvist & A. Westholm (eds), The Swedish Cyprus Expedition Volume III. Finds and
Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, 639–671, Stockholm
Buchholz, H.-G. 2003: Einige zyprische Gussforme, Report of the Department of
Antiquities, Cyprus, 113–138
Catling, H.W. 1964: Cypriot Bronzework in the Mycenaean World, Oxford
Charalambous, A. 2016: A diachronic study of Cypriot copper alloy artefacts, Journal
of Archaeological Science: Reports 7, 566–573
Courtois, J.-C. 1982: L´activité métallurgique et les bronzes d´Enkomi au Bronze
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Early Metallurgy in Cyprus 4000–500 BC, 155–174, Nicosia
Courtois, J.C. 1986: Bref historique des recherches archéologiques à Enkomi, in J.C. Courtois, J. Lagarce & E. Lagarce, Enkomi et le Bronze Récent à Chypre, 1–58,
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