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Restoring the balance: an Early Bronze Age scale beam from Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, Lebanon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Hermann Genz
Hermann Genz*
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut, Department of History and Archaeology, P.O. Box 11–0236 Beirut, Lebanon (Email: hg09@aub.edu.lb)
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Extract

The author reports an object of modest appearance but great significance — a small bone beam for weighing precious commodities. Weighing indicates the regulation of quantities for exchange or manufacture and is thus a key agent of social and economic complexity. Well-stratified and dated to the early third millennium BC, this find puts the people of the Levant among the earliest to quantify mass. We are rightly urged to inspect faunal assemblages for similarly subtle modifications of bones.

Keywords

LevantLebanonEarly Bronze Agethird millennium BCscale beambalanceanimal bones
Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 85 , Issue 329 , September 2011 , pp. 839 - 850
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2011

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