Underwater excavations of a Late Bronze Age shipwreck at Uluburun, Turkey
recovered a combined 475 oxhide and plano-convex discoid copper ingots. While the
hoard of ingots excavated at Uluburun brings the total number of copper ingots from the
Late Bronze Age to over 1000, interestingly, only one ingot mold from the that period
has been identified. Scholars have speculated over the means behind the creation of
these ingots for decades, but with a relative absence of archaeological molds the most
promising method of reaching any conclusions as to the types of molds used in antiquity
seems to be experimentation.
Experimental archaeology, has, in recent years been responsible for many
breakthroughs in how the past is viewed. In the face of an overwhelming disparity of
copper ingot molds from the Late Bronze Age, trials designed around testing different
mold materials and casting techniques have the potential to determine, with relative
certainty, how copper ingots were cast over 3000 years ago. This thesis examines the possible materials used to create copper ingot molds
through a study of their prevalence in antiquity and also details experiments in which
these materials were used, in concert with different casting techniques, to create copper
ingots. The results of these experiments are combined with analyses of the Uluburun
ingots in an effort to bring some closure to the debate surrounding copper ingot molds in
the Late Bronze Age.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2009-08-2908 |
| Date | 14 January 2010 |
| Creators | Larson, Thomas S. |
| Contributors | Pulak, Cemal |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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