Early Bronze Age Metal Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. New Compositional and Lead Isotope Evidence From Cyprus

Summary. This paper presents the results of chemical and lead isotope analyses of 17 Early and Middle Bronze Age artefacts from Cyprus. These suggest that a number of objects are of non‐Cypriot copper and lead to the identification of several as imports, a new explanation for some artefact types as ingots and a discussion of the nature of deposits at the key Cypriot site of Vasilia. This in turn allows a reconsideration of the role of Cyprus in an Aegean/eastern Mediterranean metals trade in the early years of the second half of the third millennium BC and of the development of metalworking on the island.