This volume explores the part played by different metals in use from the fourth millennium BC to the Early Iron Age, not only in the Aegean but also in the wider Old World. It addresses the divergent uses and roles of different metals, the interrelationships of these roles and the changing values that may have been accorded to them at different times and in different places by producers and consumers. Individually, the papers in the volume contemplate the particular properties of different metals and the various issues concerning their frequent under-representation in the archaeological (but not necessarily textual) record, and also point out comparative and diachronic perspectives that may have the ability to offer insights into their important roles in wider cultural and historical changes over a period of several millennia. After the Introduction and Chapter 1, which reflects on some of the parameters involved in the term 'precious' as applied to metals, the remaining six chapters cover the Aegean and the networks that link the Aegean with Italy, Cyprus and the Near East more generally, and south-east Anatolia and the Caucasus. Between them they discuss the beginnings of regular iron metallurgy, the uses of and attitudes to gold, silver and bronze and other copper-based alloys at various times between the fourth millennium BC and the Early Iron Age. AUTHORS: Toby Wilkinson is MSCA Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institut Català d¬Arqueologia Clàssica (ICAC), Tarragona, Spain, and previously at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research and Churchill College, Cambridge. His interests include spatial visualisation, macro-scale socioeconomic change, socio-technological change and cross-craft interaction and ancient technology (including textiles and metallurgy). Susan Sherratt is Reader in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests are in the Bronze and Early Iron Ages of the Aegean, Cyprus and the wider eastern Mediterranean, particularly in all aspects of trade and interaction within and beyond these regions and in exploring the ways in which the Homeric epics and the archaeological record can most usefully be combined.
