Copper-Based objects in the Jezireh during the Third Millennium BC; Types, Fabrication Techniques and origins

Jezireh is a key area in the study of Near Eastern metallurgy. The metal industry was practiced there since the Chalcolithic age and attained a developed level during the third millennium BC when local incipient societies discovered new techniques, like alloying, that contributed to making metal a common material used to fabricate new types of prestige and utilitarian objects. The different patterns of bronze and arsenical copper were the most used compositions in metal industry in the third millennium BC.
Despite the plethora of Jezireh's metal artefacts which confirm the importance of this region in metal production development, the studies that have dealt with the numerous metallic collections coming from their archaeological sites are limited. There was no general studies that analysed different sites collections together, since the metallic repertory of each site was treated in an individual way in the archaeology literature. In addition, those studies focused on the typological aspect more than other aspects which could give us a rich information about objects history.
Therefore, bringing together the widely scattered literature of fabricated objects from the most common metals in the third millennium BC and focussing on the technical, typological and archaeometric aspects of fabricated objects is very interesting. Hence, this paper could be complementary to our study that presented during BANNA 2019 international conference of Near Eastern archaeology at Liverpool University. Through two articles, we attempted to cover all aspects concerning a metal object.
In this study, more than 1000 objects and fragments (with identified functions) of copper-based from various archaeological sites in the Jezireh region (important urban centres and rural ones), were studied and classified to achieve the following objectives:
- To identify the objects types fabricated by using based-copper alloys and its chrono-typological distribution
- To classify objects types according to their function in the following categories:
Category A, the adornment of body and garment
Category B, the arms
Category C, the tools
Category D, the vessels and utensils
Category E, metal sheets
-To contextualize the place of Jezireh region on the map of metal production in Near East.
-To identify the fabrication techniques that were used to produce the different types of studied objects and to verify if there is a possible correlation between alloys types or patterns, objects types and some fabrication techniques.