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  Seagoing ships are, by necessity, self-contained systems. In addition to carrying cargo and provisions, they must carry the means to transact business in port and defend themselves in dangerous waters. They must also carry equipment and supplies for making repairs and taking care of the regular maintenance of the hull, sails, and rigging. Consequently, carpenter’s tools are a nearly ubiquitous find on carefully excavated shipwrecks, and many wrecks have produced extensive tool kits.1 The Serçe Limanı ship is no exception; the finds include a wide selection of woodworking tools, a rare set of caulking irons, and several heavy digging and foraging implements . Many of the woodworking tools were found together in a basket in the stern, along with a sharpening stone and an assortment of nails, while the foraging tools were scattered in the after part of the wreck. Several tools, including two adzes and most of the caulking irons, were found farther forward, and may indicate repairs under way at the time the ship sank. (See Fig. -.) Generally speaking, well-dated parallels for most of these tools are not available in the Aegean or eastern Mediterranean regions, largely due to the lack of published excavations of medieval sites in these areas. Extensive comparanda are available from the Balkans, particularly Bulgaria and Romania , thanks to the more advanced state of medieval archaeology in those countries, and from northern Europe. The chapter 18 Tools Frederick M. Hocker Illustrated by Sema Pulak analysis of the tools is facilitated by two distinct bodies of representational evidence. The first is a series of manuscripts of Hesiod’s Works and Days, an eighth-century B.C. text that mentions several agricultural tools. Later Byzantine copyists, particularly those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, often drew the mentioned tools in the manuscript and added tools that Hesiod did not mention but of which they were aware. These illustrations—although they are later than the wreck, usually small, and not very detailed—provide important clues to tool variation and availability in the Byzantine agricultural tradition.2 The second group of images, in a variety of media and from all over Europe, depict Noah building or directing the building of the Ark. These representations often provide detailed information on shipwrights’ tools and techniques , even the organization of the shipbuilding process and labor, as perceived by medieval artists.3 Unless otherwise noted, all the tools in this catalog were originally made of iron or steel. No metallic remains survive, but the voids left in calcareous concretion by decomposed iron objects were cast in two-part epoxy tooling compound to produce exact copies of the missing artifacts. These copies frequently preserve the form of the object and its surface in exquisite detail, down to the first layer of rust, but they cannot provide any metallurgical information (Fig. -). #     Carpenter’s Tools Adzes T 1. Adze. Inv. No. GW . Fig. - (Venetia Piercy). [Lot ] J LR. Max. pres. l. .; max. pres. w. .; max. w. of tang .; max. th. of blade .. Small fragment of wooden haft attached. Tang is worn or eroded away, but blade is complete. The blade flares from the haft stop to a curved edge with rounded bevels on both sides, although the outer bevel is slight. The blade is curved longitudinally, so that the outer face is convex. The bit of attached wood is concreted to the face of the tang that rested against the haft, and the grain is roughly perpendicular to the tang, so the fragment is almost certainly the remains of the haft; compare adzes T 2 and T 3. T 2. Adze. Inv. No. GW . Fig. -. [Lot ] K LL/. Max. pres. l. .; l. of tang .; max. pres. w. .; max. th. of blade .; l. of collar .; max. w. of collar .; th. of collar .–.; max. th. of haft .. Substantial remains of wooden haft in place against blade and under collar. Aside from part of curved edge, head of tool is complete. The tool is similar to the preserved part of T 1. The longitudinally curved blade flares from the haft stop and is slightly crowned longitudinally, so that the collar will clear the work. The edge has rounded bevels on both sides, although the outer bevel is slight. There is a medial ridge on the underside of the blade. The collar is a simple iron strap welded into a rectangular loop of even width and thickness. The back of the haft is straight above the collar. Haft remains are insufficient to determine the...

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