METALS IN ANCIENT-ISRAEL - ARCHAEOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION OF CHEMICAL-ANALYSIS

Over a thousand metal finds are now known from Chalcolithic and Early Bronze habitation sites, burial caves, and hoards in Israel and Jordan . To answer the question as to how these artifacts were made, more tha n 200 objects were sampled for metallographic analysis and for chemica l analysis by electron-probe X-ray microanalysis and by atomic absorpt ion spectrophotometry. In the Chalcolithic period (4th millennium BC), within a confined zone of southern Israel and Jordan, three entirely different groups of metal objects were found together. Various materia ls (Cu-As-Sb; Au; Cu) from totally separate sources were used in diver se production methods to produce specific classes of objects, of a spe cific shape and color, totally different from one another. In contrast , the components of Early Bronze Age (3rd millennium BC) metal product ion indicate a fundamental change in the structure and level of craft specialization. This change may be recognized mainly by the unity of t he repertory of objects and the use of the same source-metal (Ag; Au; Cu) for a wider range of products, as well as by the total technologic al and geographical separation between extraction and production. The transformation from proto-urban to urban society documents an importan t stage of social, economic, and political development in Early Bronze Age Israel and Jordan. Many explanations have been offered for this t ransformation, most of them based on external intervention or stimulus . This paper adds to the existing arguments for the beginning of urban ization, the missing local socioeconomic factor, based on changes in s ocial complexity as reflected in the first two thousand years of metal lurgy.