Otherness and interaction in copper metallurgy in the Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant: The Transcaucasian connection

JARUF, PABLO F.; GANDULLA, BERNARDO

Claroscuro

Centro de Estudios sobre Diversidad Cultural

Lugar: Rosario; Año: 2017 vol. 16 p. 1 - 22

2314-0542

Studies in copper metallurgy during the Chalcolithic period in the Southern Levant (ca. 4500-3800/3600 B.C.E.) have determined that two production techniques seem to have coexisted: the open mould technique, located in Beersheba valley, which used pure copper from the Faynan mines, Jordan, and the lost wax technique, which used arsenical copper from the Transcaucasus region or Eastern Anatolia, whose production sites are still unknown. Two-thirds of the total amount of copper objects pertaining to this period were cast using the second technique and were found in a single site: a cave in Nahal Mishmar, near the Dead Sea. Our hypothesis, considering the lack of evidence regarding exchange between the Southern Levant and the Transcaucasus or Eastern Anatolia, is that metallurgists must have come from this last region bringing the minerals with them. In their interaction with native populations, the members of this group would have tried to achieve their integration by copying local objects and iconographic motifs but without losing their ethnocultural identity, which they expressed through the use of a foreign material and a new technology.