The sword and the axe. Symbols of value in the Bronze Age social and economic exchange networks linking the Aegean to Italy within a diachronic perspective

A sound motivation for the increasing evidence of contacts between the Aegean and the Adriatic regions in the last centuries of the Late Bronze Age seems to have been the demand for Alpine metal, as important clues about industrial exploitation of metal ores in the Trentino area and even a few archaeometric data might confirm. The scanty evidence concerning exploitation and transport of bulk commodities from the Central Mediterranean to the Aegean seems however to contradict traditional views inferring that the Mycenaeans travelling westwards had a main interest in Italian raw materials. By contrast, various evidence points to a general pattern predicting flows of raw materials from the east to the west, a flow mainly controlled in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean by palatial emissaries and/or private traders in the framework of command economies. A prevailing role of individual agents and small-scale encounters in the Italo-Aegean interaction network fits better with a pattern of exchange through social networks, craft interaction and circulation of finished goods, which might have been involved in a process of commoditization, as has been already suggested by scholars. Taking into detailed consideration the cycles of metallurgical production in the northern Adriatic, including metal supply, recycling and hoarding in a span of time going from the local advanced Middle to the Final Bronze Age (14th-11th centuries), I would like to investigate the ambiguous meaning of the Italian bronzes and their changing function through time, fluctuating between a broadly social role and a prevalent economic one, and possibly shifting to an emerging political function at the very end of the Bronze Age. At that time a major discontinuity in the system of values fostering metal exchange seems to be stressed by some evidence concerning change in ore exploitation and supply in the circumalpine regions, the emerging role of other metals such as lead and iron as well as changing practices of bronze deposition in the Aegean. Special emphasis is given to some classes of materials, such as swords and winged axes, which seem to have represented special symbols of value in the framework of interlocking spheres of metal circulation.