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The aims of the study were both to determine whether a systematic analysis of the quantity and quality of the copper and bronze metal finds in all their forms in the preserved metal record from the Minoan Neopalatial and the Mycenaean Final Palatial and Postpalatial societies on Late Bronze Age Crete (ca. 1600 - 1200 BC) increases our understanding of these metal systems and their effect on the political economy, social values, and cultural habits in the society and to test a method devised especially for this study. The most decisive feature of the metal system on LBA Crete is that the island lacked viable ore deposits: the copper and tin needed in the bronze industry had to be imported from abroad. A surprisingly large amount of metal, ca. 2000 kg., has been preserved from LBA Crete, divided equally between ingots and objects. Scholars are generally in agreement on the importance of metals in the Bronze Age societies, but so far no one has focused directly on this topic. The study material consists of published bronze objects, ingots and refractory material, in total ca. 3300 finds collected from many sources. This heterogeneous material was managed by coding the finds and registering them in a flexible database ΧΑΛΚΟΣ especially designed for this study, enabling searching and sorting of the material at will. Central to the method is its focus on the metal amount, its volume, use and circulation, and not on specific bronze objects. Analyses of selected aspects of the record included the spatial distribution of the metal amount, the balances between metal in prestige and utilitarian objects and that between metal in circulation and metal permanently deposited plus its distribution in the metal cycle. The analyses were made for the three periods, each subdivided geographically for East, Central and West Crete. The approach is new in three ways: the metal-centered focus for studying Aegean societies, the holistic view comprising all types of copper-based metal finds, and the quantification of the metal finds by weight. As only some few metal weights have been published, weight estimations were an important part of the study. In conclusion it is argued that the method devised for the study works. The results indicate that metal seems to have been a crucial, strategic resource for both the Minoan and the Mycenaean palatial societies on LBA Crete, but the motives for acquiring it and its uses might have been different: for the Minoans metals were mainly prime movers for general economic development, they let the metal make the world go round, with metals a part of daily life, whereas the Mycenaeans regarded metal mainly as a means for generating status and power for an elite, strictly controlling it. In the third, Postpalatial, period metals seem to have been one commodity of many, to which the whole population had access.
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