Report on Session TH1-16 at the 22nd Annual Meeting of the EAA in Vilnius, Lithuania
by Clive Bonsall (C.Bonsall@ed.ac.uk), Maria Gurova (gurovam@yahoo.fr) and Pierre Allard (pierre.allard@mae.u-paris10.fr)
In prehistory, lithic raw materials had an important role in economic, social and ideological aspects of society. This session elicited contributions from scholars from Europe and North America addressing three key themes: i) raw material sourcing and supply in prehistory; ii) distribution systems and organization; and iii) factors governing the choice of raw materials for specific tasks.
After a brief introduction by the organisers, the session began with a paper by Robert Tykot (University of South Florida) on the acquisition and use of obsidian in the Central Mediterranean, and changes through time. Clive Bonsall (University of Edinburgh) presented the first results of research (undertaken in collaboration with local scholars) on the provenance of archaeological obsidian from Bulgaria. Šatavičius Egidijus (Vilnius University) reviewed the occurrence of flint resources in Lithuania and the development flint mining sites in the southern part of the country starting in the Late Palaeolithic. The presentation by Rita Gaspar (University of Porto) focused on the multiple uses of greywacke in NW Iberia from the Palaeolithic to the Bronze Age, while that by Norbert Faragó (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) examined the differences in raw material procurement and use between tell and ‘flat’ sites in Neolithic northeast Hungary.
The second half of the session centred on Northern Europe. Astrid Nyland (Oslo) described her ‘social approach’ to the study of lithic extraction sites from the Stone and Bronze Ages in Norway. Svein Nielsen (Museum of Cultural History, Oslo) presented an analysis of two long blade ‘caches’ dating to the third millennium BC; though found 85km apart, remarkably technological and refitting analysis showed that the blades in both caches had been stuck from the same core! The presentation by Katarzyna Pyzewicz (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań) focused on the manufacture, distribution and function of flint axes from the Final Neolithic in Poland, considering the question of the locus of their manufacture. The prehistoric ‘banded flint’ mines on the northeast margin of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains in Poland were the subject of the presentation by Michal Szubski (University of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski in Warsaw) and demonstrated the value of airborne laser scanning for large area surveys of prehistoric mining sites. The session was brought to a close by Sylwia Buławka (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw) who moved the geographical focus to Egypt and the chronological focus to the Bronze Age, with a review of her ongoing research on the production and use of flint implements during the Dynastic Period.
In addition to the oral contributions, the session included nine posters on the following topics:
- Obsidian blades debitage at Kašov-Cepegov I (Bükk Culture), Slovakia, Pierre Allard (CNRS, Paris)
- In search of a non-destructive way of identifying lidite in archaeological lithic assemblages, Mikael Manninen (University of Oslo)
- A Danubian raw material exchange network: a case study from Chelmno Land (Poland), Dagmara Werra (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Science, Warsaw)
- Local flint pebbles reduction strategies in the settlement of Sarnate. Marcis Kalnins (University of Latvia, Riga)
- Localisation of sources of obsidian registered in Bohemian prehistory (Czech Republic), Pavel Burgert (Institute of Archaeology, Prague)
- Chocolate flint extraction points and workshops in Oronsko, Poland. Spatial and functional analysis, Katarzyna Kerneder-Gubała (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań)
- Analysis of household units from chipped stone tools at Alsónyék–Bátaszék (Hungary), Kata Szilagyi (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)
- Flint inventory of the Neolithic and Bronze Age from the sites at Žylicy (Western Belarus), Sviatlan Velent-Shcherbach (Belarus Institute of History, Minsk)
- Application of morphometric methods for the lithic analysis based on 2D and 3D visualizations, Liga Zarina (University of Latvia, Riga)
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