Incised Late Bronze Age lead ingots from the southern anchorage of Caesarea
Introduction
Twenty-two Bronze Age shipwreck assemblages, characterized by concentrations of single-holed stone anchors, are known along the Carmel coast in Israel (Galili et al., 2011). Several dating to the Late Bronze Age contain metal ingots (Fig. 1). These include the cargo from Hishuley Carmel, containing two complete oxhide copper ingots, 14 tin ingots and one lead ingot (Galili et al., 1986, Galili et al., 2013), a cargo from Hahotrim, which included fragments of oxhide copper ingots and lead ingots (Wachsmann and Raveh, 1981, Wachsmann, 2020), and two cargoes from Kfar Samir: Kfar Samir south containing lead and tin ingots (Raban and Galili, 1985, Galili et al., 2011), and Kfar Samir north, containing fragments of oxhide copper ingots and bronze spatter (Galili, 1985, Galili et al., 2011, Yahalom-Mack et al., 2014). A number of round lead ingots were apparently retrieved from the Kfar Samir north site by a fisherman, and were sold for scrap (Galili, et al., 2011: 67). An additional cargo was found near Neve Yam, containing 86 copper loaf-shaped ingots (Galili et al., forthcoming); based on chemical and lead isotope analyses, their origin was traced to the Arabah mines (Yahalom-Mack et al., 2014). A single loaf-shaped copper ingot, very similar to the ones from Neve Yam, was found in the Akko Harbor (Galili et al., 2011:69). An additional cargo, comprising four lead ingots, was found in the southern anchorage of Caesarea and is the subject of the current study (Fig. 2).
Section snippets
The cargo
Underwater surveys carried out in the southern anchorage of Caesarea by Haifa University and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), headed by E. Galili, uncovered several assemblages dating from the Late Bronze Age (LB) onwards (Galili et al., 1993, Galili, 2017, Fig. 10). In one of them, alongside, five stone anchors, four lead ingots1
Ingot No. 91-389
Two signs that have been identified as Cypro-Minoan (CM) were engraved on the convex side of this ingot and two others on its flat side. Each pair is similarly oriented and mostly aligned. The signs on the convex side are identified as CM 37 (Valério, 2016: 120, Table 2: 32) and CM 693 (Valério, 2016: 185, Table 3:17). On the flat side, the signs are identified as CM 37 and
Chronology
Single-holed stone anchors were used throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages, and thus may not be used as a reliable chronological or cultural marker (Galili et al., forthcoming). However, based on the CM script, the date of the ingots can be established generally in the Late Cypriot (LC) period (c. 1600–1100 BCE; see Table 2). On the one hand, it is possible that the markings belong to an early phase of this script, perhaps as early as LC I, as the archaic, cursive, tree-like form of CM 37 found
Method
The lead ingots from Caesarea were subjected to lead isotope analysis (LIA), a method particularly useful for provenancing ingots which are often directly related to the ore (for a recent discussion of the method, see Pernicka, 2014). Thirty mg of drillings were dissolved in nitric acid. Following dilution, Ag and Pb concentrations were determined using a quadrupole Inductively Coupled Plasma – Mass Spectrometer (ICP-MS, Agilent 7500cx). The ICP-MS was calibrated with a series of multi-element
Results
The results of the analysis are presented in Table 3. All three Pb isotopic ratios measured for the four ingots, regardless of differences in shape and size, are very similar, suggesting that all were made of the same lead ore. When compared to isotopic data from the Mediterranean region (and Iran), the Caesarea samples are highly consistent with lead ores from the southwest of Sardinia at Iglesiente, and, to a lesser degree, with ores from southern France and Iberia (Fig. 4). Significantly,
Sardinian lead in the eastern Mediterranean: trade and chronology
As indicated by the analytical results, the lead in the ingots from Caesarea originated from the Iglesiente area in southwest Sardinia. An Iglesiente provenance is consistent with multiple lead objects recovered from various Nuragic contexts (Valera et al., 2005: 60), and provides direct evidence of exploitation of Sardinian lead earlier than previously thought (contra Terpstra, 2021:180). Additional occurrences of Sardinian lead in the eastern part of the Mediterranean basin include other lead
CRediT authorship contribution statement
N. Yahalom-Mack: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft, Methodology, Validation, Supervision. D.M. Finn: Visualization, Writing – original draft. Y. Erel: Methodology, Resources, Validation, Writing – original draft. O. Tirosh: Investigation. E. Galili: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft. A. Yasur-Landau: Conceptualization, Writing – original draft.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Prof. Nicolle Hirschfeld for pointing us to the Zawiyet Umm el-Rackam marks. We thank Dr. Nava Panitz-Cohen for her editing and valuable comments. This research was funded by the Philip and Muriel Berman Center for Biblical Archaeology.
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