gems, ancient history, Egypt, India, ancient technology, ancient lapidary

The Bronze Age was a period when the notion of ‘frontiers’ was fluid and contacts were wide ranging. In a situation of considerable movements of people and objects, what probably also travelled were technologies. This article looks at different drilling technologies in the Bronze Age from Egypt to the Indian subcontinent. The adoption or rejection of different types of drilling mechanisms in different regions reminds us that technologies have to be socially acceptable in the first place before they could be adopted.