The purpose of my original article (Dayton 1971) was to demolish two accepted archaeological myths, and to examine the implications of their demolition. These myths were (i) that tin existed behind Byblos; and (2) that tin was obtained from the Caucasus or Zagros areas. Tin is a very scarce metal and only occurs in a few specific areas of the world. The nearest sources to the civilizations of the Near East were: (a) Europe: Bohemia, Brittany, Spain and Portugal, and Cornwall. (b) Africa: northern Nigeria (the Jos Plateau) and in the Zimbabwe area. (c) Asia: in Thailand, Malaya, western Indonesia, north east Siberia, and Hunan. Tin bronzes appear in the Near East during the third millennium B.C. associated with a particular type of artefact: a socketed axe or adze, cast in a closed mould. The introduction of closed mould casting and the use of true tin bronzes represent an archaeological watershed. In the last few years, with the aid of CI4 dating, the date of the European Bronze Age has been drastically put back, whereas before it had appeared to be at least a thousand years later than that of the Near East. It had thus been an easy assumption that the spread of metallurgy was from the Near East to Europe. In my article I suggested that this diffusion was in fact from Europe into the Near East. (By Bronze Age, I mean the phase when the deliberate smelting of ores and the casting of copper was commonly practised, as distinct from the hammering of native copper.) Drs Muhly and Wertime's main objection to my article appears to be on the meaning of the word annaku, which has vexed epigraphists for the last fifty years. The argument between the meaning of 'lead' or 'tin' has been well summarized by Landsberger (I965). My critics are convinced that annaku is tin. The writer is doubtful of this meaning, in an Old Assyrian context. At the beginning of the second millennium B.C. the Assyrians had a chain of trading posts across the centre of Anatolia, from the headwaters of the Tigris to the Halys and the Black Sea. Some twenty-eight karums are listed in the texts, and the tablets from one of these, Kiiltepe, give details of an extensive trade. Large quantities of annaku were sent northwards from Ashur to Kiiltepe. Other texts indicate that annaku was traded from east to west, from Babylonia to Syria (by ship to Emar and Halab) and from Ashur to Mari. Annaku is also sent from Susa to Mari (Dossin 1970: I02). Some 500 years earlier, at the very period under discussion, we hear of the merchants of Purushkhanda asking