During the next thousand years of the Early Bronze Age (end of 4th–end of 3rd millennium BCE) the same unalloyed copper production of the Chalcolithic (group 2, above) continued for the production of short blades and points. The same metal technique was used for the novel production of long blade weapons
(riveted daggers and knives, heavy tanged swords, and epsilon-shaped axes). The same copper production
technique of casting into an open mould and then hammering and annealing, was used to produce all other
metals as well, including jewelry of thin plates, sometimes decorated, and elongated thin wires (mainly for rings and bracelets) made of unalloyed copper as well as from silver (first appearance) and gold.
Archaeological remains of Early Bronze copper mining and copper smelting in the vicinity of the
mines were found in Trans-Jordan (Feinan), the Arava Valley (Timnah), and southern Sinai. The only production remains of metal are those of copper and include copper slag, prills, and amorphous copper lumps and small shallow ball-shaped clay crucibles with a socket. In the Early Bronze I site of the Ashkelon Marina, in the southern part of the Israeli coast, small shallow open pits, probably for the melting of copper in a crucible, were found next to copper industrial remains.
All pits showed a similar structure of a red soil burnt layer covered within by a white thin layer of calcite. No archaeological material was found associated with these man-made rudimentary remains. In the vicinity, and detached from the installations, scattered remains of pottery sherds, bone fragments, copper slag remains, and some pieces of clay crucibles were found. They were dated to Early Bronze Age I. Optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages of the fill of the pits and thermoluminescence (TL) ages of quartz grains extracted from the hardened red layer of the pits showed that the last burning activity was conducted during the same period: 5260 ± 380 years ago (OSL) and 5180 ± 380 years ago (TL).
Most of the metal products are found in burials, and are mainly from the Early Bronze I. The same types of metals continue in sites and tombs throughout the entire Early Bronze and all over the local distribution map of Early Bronze sites in Israel, from the Upper Galilee in the north to Ein Besor and Malhata in the northern Negev. A single hoard of copper objects probably from the Early Bronze I was found with no related archaeological context in the
fields of Kfar Monash.
During the Early Bronze period the Southern Levants metal industry became more specialized and organized in separated places for the different parts of production, and the products became more homogenous, as did the different materials and modes of production. For the first time in the Southern Levants metal history, significant typological and technological affiliations to the growing metal industries in the two major imperial centers (Egypt and Mesopotamia) on both sides of the “Fertile Crescent” were visible. During all the Early Bronze Age there is no archaeometallurgical evidence for bronze production and no bronze objects were found during this period in the Southern Levant as opposed to unalloyed copper.