Alum News: Bronze Age metallurgy and tool hoards of the ancient Aegean with Nicholas Blackwell (Ph.D. '11, Archaeology)

Dr. Nicholas Blackwell (Ph.D. '11), current Schrader Visiting Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Indiana University, has published a new article in the October issue (122.4) of the American Journal of Archaeology, titled "Contextualizing Mycenaean Hoards: Metal Control on the Greek Mainland at the End of the Bronze Age". His paper continues his scholarship on metallurgy and tool use in the Middle and Late Bronze Age Aegean, which began at Bryn Mawr with his dissertation Middle and Late Bronze Age Metal Tools from the Aegean, Eastern Mediterranean, and Anatolia: Implications for Cultural/Regional Interaction and Craftsmanship. Professor Blackwell studied under the advisement of Archaeology Professor Emeritus James C. Wright.

From his abstract: "This paper considers the Mycenaean metallurgical industry at the end of the Bronze Age through analysis of metal hoards and the tools found within them. An overview of second-millennium hoards from Crete and the Greek mainland is presented to contextualize the various objects from these assemblages. Patterns of implement inclusion reveal a repeated tool grouping in seven Mycenaean hoards, most associated with elite contexts. These Mycenaean caches, incorporating a range of complete and broken items, are traditionally considered recyclable scrap, but they need not be random accumulations. The repetitive tool grouping suggests a structural principle in hoard formations, perhaps dictated by the state." More of Professor Blackwell's work published in the American Journal of Archaeology is available here.

His recent article is not the only aspect of his work to gain publicity this year. In May, Professor Blackwell's experimental archaeology work was featured by the magazine ScienceNews with the article "How a backyard pendulum saw sliced into a Bronze Age mystery". The article spotlights a fully-functional reconstruction of a Mycenaean pendulum saw Professor Blackwell built with his father, which together they reversed engineered through Professor Blackwell's meticulous study of curved incisions made into Bronze Age stone masonry. A more detailed study of this project "Experimental stone-cutting with the Mycenaean pendulum saw" was published in this February's issue of the journal Antiquity (92.361).