A couple notes which hopefully will help answer some questions that have been raised: Copper in its natural form was used before copper was used in smelted form during the Bronze Age. Also, the Ebla tablets discussed in the last two paragraphs of the article are old news that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the new finds discussed earlier in the main body of article, other than apparently that the archaeological team was doing digging related to Ebla research when they happened to stumble onto the other finds which are the subject of the article. The Ebla tablets are from a much later period than the finds which are the subject of the article. And yes, they are written in cuneiform--the Ebla scribes imported Sumerian cuneiform and used it to write in Sumerian as well as Eblaite, a Semitic language.
Good. Thanks for clearing that up.