Tin

Currently it is believed that the alloying of tin with copper to make bronze appears for the first time in Mesopotamia around 2700 B.C. (see technical studies for Kish). So the absence of bronze certainly during Hissar I and most likely for much of Hissar II was to be expected. But Schmidt did believe that Hissar III at least overlapped with times when bronze was to be found in burial contexts at Ur; i.e., during that site’s phases of Early Dynastic I through Early Dynastic III (circa 2900 B.C.–2330 B.C.) and onwards through the Akkadian period (circa 2330 B.C.–2120 B.C.). The lack of a tin bronze among the 43 Hissar III sherds included in the MASCA program suggests that there was little contact, at least in terms of metallurgical technology, between Tepe Hissar and southern Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium B.C.