Narrator: When I look around the gallery, I see a lot of marble and terracotta objects, but fewer in metal. I asked the Archaeologist Sandy MacGillivray, to tell me more about these two particular pieces and the materials that they’re made of.

MacGillivray: This chisel is a very, very unusual and really well-preserved example of the sort of tool that was made from one of the local mineral resources.

Narrator: He explained that the Cycladic islands were rich in copper and the islanders were skilled in how to mine and “smelt” it. On the other hand, other materials, like tin, had to have been imported via trade. What about the silver in the bracelets?

MacGillivray: There are silver mines that were then exploited in the later Greek period and made the Western Cycladic Islands very, very wealthy. But already back in the early Bronze Age, they were extracting the silver. The silver bracelet’s an extremely rare preservation of something that we suspect would have been fairly common. And that is: jewelry crafted from native local silver.

Narrator: And how would the chisel have been used?

MacGillivray: This is the sort of tool that would have been essential for daily life. Tink of boat building, think of building houses, think of building furniture, but also think of roughing out the shapes in marble for the Cycladic figures that we see in these cases.

Narrator: So, the Cycladic islands were incredibly rich in materials that were being traded not just amongst the islanders, but also internationally. Why was there such abundance for them?

MacGillivray: Cycladic Islands are a volcanic ring,it’s called the Hellenic Volcanic Arc. And so it means that there's a lot of activity in the earth. That's why there are so many earthquakes in this region, but that's why it's so rich in mineral resources.