The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe

by Chris Fowler

  Little is known as yet of the social context and organizational aspects of long blade distribution, although conjoinable blades in depositions outside production areas indicate that it may have been a structured activity, possibly involving specialist flint knappers. The circulation and consumption of long blades, and of the tools made from them, are commonly connected with male competition and prestige exchange. Some of the evidence suggests, however, that they may have moved in more differentiated social spheres, both in a regional context and after crossing social boundaries.

  At the Bulgarian Varna cemetery, the longest blades occurred in the richest graves, suggesting that they were valued precisely because of their size. In other cemeteries of the same region, however, they did not mark high-status males (Sirakov 2002), and in one example they were associated exclusively with females (Chapman 1996). Moreover, in the domestic domain the rare, imported super-long blades were often intentionally broken to the size of locally produced blades and intensively used, for instance in plant-processing activities (Manolakakis 2007).

  The situation in western Europe is equally differentiated. Both pressed and punched long blades were in part carefully retouched into knife- or dagger-like tools. Despite the martial connotation of the latter label, many of them were also intensively used in a variety of plant-processing activities (Plisson et al. 2002), and repeatedly sharpened and recycled. This was not only the case in, for example, Swiss lakeside settlements (Honegger 2001), where they could conceivably have lost their original value and social messages after moving beyond their regional context, but also closer to home—in the case of Le Grand-Pressigny, for instance, in the Paris Basin (Mallet et al. 2004). Recent microwear evidence indicates that even daggers deposited in a seemingly pristine condition in burials had been previously used in such an innocuous way (Clop et al. 2006). On the other hand, in the Single Grave culture of the Netherlands and north-western Germany, imported French daggers really were not treated as utilitarian commodities, but as valued prestige objects (Figure 25.4) (Delcourt-Vlaeminck 2004). This diversity suggests that long blades moved along multilayered trajectories, connecting different social spheres, in which the functional and symbolic aspects of consumption and distribution are best regarded not as entirely separate entities but as intertwined aspects of the same context.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Many thanks to the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht for allowing me to reproduce Figure 25.3, to Inna Mateiciucová, Brno University, for Figures 25.1 and 25.2, and to JaapBeuker, Drents Museum Assen, for making Figure 25.4 available to me.

  FIG. 25.2. Witold Migal’s (Warsaw) experimental production of blades using the pressure technique.

  (photo: Inna Mateiciucová, Brno).

  FIG. 25.1. Witold Migal’s (Warsaw) experimental work on blade production by indirect percussion.

  (photo: Inna Mateiciucová, Brno).

  FIG. 25.3. Refitted Bandkeramik blade core (L: 15cm) from Beek-Kerkeveld (the Netherlands), showing orthogonal flaking angles and large core rejuvenation tablets.

  (photo: Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht).

  FIG. 25.4. Two ‘daggers’ found in the Netherlands: the smaller one on the top (Eext, L. 23.8cm) is made from Le Grand-Pressigny flint, the larger one on the bottom (Buinen, L. 25.1cm) from the Romigny-Lhéry flint type occurring in northern France. Both were manufactured by indirect percussion, carefully polished after detachment, and subsequently shaped by pressure retouch.

  (photos: Jaap Beuker, Drents Museum Assen).

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  * * *

  * Submitted February 2009, revised January 2012

  CHAPTER 26

  SHARED LABOUR AND LARGE-SCALE ACTION*

  European Flint Mining

  MARTA CAPOTE AND PEDRO DÍAZ-DEL-RÍO

  INTRODUCTION

  NEOLITHIC communities engaged in flint mining from very early on. These activities lasted, with different tempos, at least until the end of the third millennium BC. They took place at the very extremities of the Continent as well as at numerous places in between (Fig. 26.1). Nevertheless, considerable distances lay between individual mines or clusters of mines, suggesting that the distribution of these sites is largely, but not entirely, due to the availability of the desired raw material.

  FIG. 26.1. Some of the best-known European Neolithic sites where deep mining has been documented. Their distribution is compared to the areas (shaded) defined by Duke and Steele (2010) as having higher probability of tool-quality lithic raw material availability: several mines (e.g. 1, 13, or 24) indicate that some areas not predicted to yield tool-quality rock did in fact have a higher potential than suggested. UK: 1, Den of Boddam; 2, Grime’s Graves; 3, Blackpatch; 4, Church Hill; 5, Cissbury. Denmark: 6, Hov. Sweden: 7, Kvarnby-S. Sallerup. France: 8, Ri; 9, Jablines. Belgium: 10, Spiennes. Netherlands: 11, Rijckholt. Germany: 12, Kleinkems; 13, Abensberg-Arnhofen. Czech Republic: 14, Tusimice; 15, Krumlovský les. Poland: 16, Wierzbica; 17, Tomaszów; 18, Krzemionki; 19, Swieciechów; 20, Saspów; Austria: 21, Wien-Mauer. Hungary: 22, Sümeg. Belarus: 23, Krasnoye Selo. Spain: 24, Casa Montero. Italy: 25, Defensola.