Ludmila Avilova

The use of metals and copper-based alloys are one of the distinguishing features of the ancient civilizations in the Near East. The intensive excavations that have been carried out in Syro-Mesopotamia during the last decades allow to discuss the specifi c details of production and trade in metals from several Near Eastern minefi elds. The present article gives a brief overview of the ore deposits that were or could have been worked in antiquity, of the testimony of metal production at several Late Eneolithic, Early and Middle Bronze Agesites in Eastern Anatolia and the basins of the Upper and Middle Euphrates, which are located along the trade routes that connected Eastern Anatolia, Northeastern Syria, Mesopotamia and some of the more distant regions, including Northern Caucasus and, probably, Transcaucasia. Especial attention is given to nickel arseniс bronzes, which were widely used in the Early Bronze Age. The author connects the data with such phenomena in the development of Bronze Age Near Eastern society (for instance, of the Uruk civilization) as organized colonization of the lands which had rich natural resources, and centralized state control over the production and distribution of agricultural products.