Comments on 'Oxhide Ingots, Recycling and the Mediterranean Metals Trade'

Abstract

We can comment most efficiently on the analysis of the stable lead isotope ratios in Late Bronze Age oxhide ingots presented by Budd et al. by presenting first our own analysis of pertinent parts of these data. A preliminary observation on the data is that they divide into a number of distinctively different groups. It is true that a sizeable fraction of the ingots, from various find sites, have isotope ratios close to, or overlapping, those of Cyprus copper ores but, as Gale and Stos~Gale have pointed out, none of the oxhide ingots found on Crete has isotope ratios at all consistent with Cypriot ores.