Lithic Sourcing

Trois aires de production de haches ont été identifiées dans les Alpes suisses et dans les Pyrénées, en associant l’étude des déchets de fabrication et la prospection sur le terrain :
- la première, dans les Grisons, correspond à l’exploitation de lentilles et de galets dans la vallée de la Julia (Oberhalbstein), avec des villages spécialisés dans la haute vallée du Rhin ;
- la seconde se situe en Valais dans la haute vallée du Rhône aux environs de Sion ; les exploitations de lentilles de néphrite étaient situées en montagne, entre 1 700 et 2 700 m d’altitude ;
- quant à la troisième aire, en Haute Ariège, elle n’est connue que par une production spécialisée dans la grotte de Bédeilhac ; les gisements de néphrite, eux, n’ont pas encore été précisément localisés.

Ces trois aires de production ont alimenté les échanges régionaux probablement dès le début du Ve millénaire et certainement jusqu’au début du IIIe.

Les analyses spectroradiométriques ont permis de construire deux référentiels pour caractériser ces productions et pister leur circulation à longue distance :
- un référentiel d’échantillons naturels,  qui compte 701 spectres ;
- un référentiel d’objets archéologiques, qui regroupe 834 spectres avec présence d’une amphibole dominante.

En dépit d’une forte variabilité interne dans les gîtes de matières premières et de spectres parfois presque semblables dans des gîtes différents, l’approche spectroradiométrique a permis d’identifier l’origine de grandes haches et d’un anneau-disque en néphrite, découverts à plus de 500 km de leur zone d’origine. Parmi celles-ci figurent des lames polies du tumulus géant carnacéen de Tumiac et du dépôt de Bernon à Arzon (Morbihan), dont l’origine alpine (Grisons et Valais) n’est pas douteuse. Il en va de même pour l’anneau-disque de Languidic, qui est le seul objet de ce type mis en forme à partir d’une plaque de néphrite valaisanne.

À l’échelle régionale, c’est-à-dire dans un rayon d’une centaine de kilomètres, les trois centres de production ont injecté des haches et des ciseaux en grand nombre. Les transferts deviennent beaucoup plus discrets au-delà de 100 km et s’estompent complètement passé 200 km à vol d’oiseau. Cependant quelques objets exceptionnels franchissent cette limite et, dans le cas des Grisons et du Valais, ont atteint le golfe du Morbihan à plus de 800 km ; au contraire, les néphrites pyrénéennes ne semblent pas avoir connu une telle dynamique expansive à très longue distance.

Cette différence entre les deux centres alpins et le centre pyrénéen pourrait s’expliquer par leur position respective par rapport aux grands axes de diffusion des jades alpins (jadéitites, omphacitites, éclogites fines) à partir du massif du Mont Viso en direction de l’ouest. Les jades alpins, socialement valorisés dans les dons entre élites, auraient alors entraîné dans leur sillage des anneaux-disques de type alsacien ou alpin et quelques artefacts alpins remarquables en néphrite – une matière première de moindre valeur idéelle – tandis que les lames polies en néphrite pyrénéenne restaient cantonnées à l’aire habituelle de diffusion des outillages techniques en pierre polie.




Abstract :

Alpine and Pyrenaean nephrites. Prospection, reference samples and spectroradiometric reconnaissance

¬¬Three areas of axehead production have been identified in the Swiss Alps and in the Pyrenees, thanks to a study of debitage associated with field prospection :
- The first, in the Grisons, corresponds to the exploitation of lenses and cobbles in the valley of the Julia river (Oberhalbstein), with specialist villages in the high Rhine valley;
- The second is situated in Valais in the high valley of the Rhône around Sion; lenses of nephrite are to be found on the mountainside, between 1700 and 2700 metres above sea level ;
- The third, in Haute Ariège, is only known from a specialist production site in the cave of Bédeilhac;  the actual outcrops of nephrite are not precisely located.

These three production areas provided material for exchange at a regional scale, probably from the beginning of the fifth millennium, and certainly until the beginning of the third.

Spectroradiometric analyses have allowed us to create two reference collections of spectra in order to characterise these productions and to trace the long-distance circulation of their products, namely:

- A raw material reference collection, comprising 701 spectra;
- A reference collection of archaeological objects, which comprises 834 spectra, with a dominant presence of amphibole.

Despite the facts that there is a marked variability within the source areas, and that nephrites from different sources can sometimes produce the same spectra, the application of spectroradiometry has enabled us to identify the origin of large axeheads and of one ring-disc of nephrite, found over 500 km from their place of origin. These include the polished axeheads found in the gigantic Carnac-type mound at Tumiac and in the hoard found at Bernon, Arzon (Morbihan). The Alpine (Grisons and Valais) origin of these axeheads is not in doubt. The same is true of the ring-disc from Languidic, which is the only object of this type known to have been made from a plaque of Valais nephrite.

At the regional level – that is, within a radius of a hundred kilometres – large numbers of axeheads and chisels circulated from the three production centres. The numbers show a steep fall-off beyond 100 km and drop to virtually nothing at distances beyond 200 km. However, certain exceptional objects travelled further than this and, in the case of objects from Grisons and Valais, reached the Gulf of Morbihan over 800 km away. By contrast, objects made from the Pyrenaean nephrites do not seem to have travelled over long distances.

This difference between the two Alpine centres and the Pyrenaean centre could be explained by their respective positions with regard to the main axes of travel of objects made from Alpine jades (jadeitites, omphacitites and fine eclogites), moving from Mont Viso in a westerly direction. The flow of Alpine jades, which had a high social value in gift exchanges between elites, would also have brought in its train some ring-discs of Alpine or Alsacian types, and also several remarkable Alpine artefacts made of nephrite – a raw material of lesser social value. In contrast, the distribution of polished axeheads made from Pyrenaean nephrite remained limited to the normal distribution area for polished stone tools.

This paper presents a synthesis of geological, geochemical, and archaeological information for the Huenul
obsidian source located in northern Patagonia (Neuquén Province, Argentina). Important information
recently published on other obsidian sources in the South-Central Andes of Argentina and Chile provide the
context for this endeavor, allowing evaluation of the role of this lithic source within the network of human
mobility and interaction on different spatial scales. It is suggested here that Huenul obsidian is genetically
related with the Tilhué Formation, already been mapped in detail. This regional information provides
a search model for geoarchaeological surveys. This raw material displays a remarkable supra-regional
distribution in the archaeological record, although it is regionally under-represented. Three alternative
hypotheses explaining the distribution of Huenul obsidians allow evaluation of technological decisions,
marginal vs. nuclear role of certain spaces for past human societies, and territorial organization.

The choice of Alpine jades

Up to the present, superlatives have always been used to describe Neolithic axeheads made of jade: the toughest rock, the finest-grained, the most luminous green colour that catches the light of the sun, the extraordinary polish, the longest blades, etc. It is assumed that all these characteristics, deemed to be indissociable, are what explain the success of these polished axeheads in Europe over three millennia. Behind these enthusiastic descriptions lie a number of criteria that are currently used by gemmologists to determine the market value of jades used for jewellery and for art objects.

The modern definition of jade that the gemmologists use – which covers only jade-jadeite and jade-nephrite – is different from, and much more restrictive than the archaeological (and Neolithic?) definition of ‘Alpine jades’, which encompasses jadeitites, omphacitites, eclogites and some amphibolites, while nephrites are excluded. We should therefore define each one of the qualities of Alpine jades individually, in seeking to rank them in order to understand their relative value during the Neolithic and their respective influence on the long-distance circulation of polished axeheads.

This chapter starts by considering the ways in which jades would have been recognised at or near the sources of the raw material, then goes on to discuss their variability in texture and colour, the investment of time in creating axeheads of different lengths and in using different manufacturing techniques, and finally the different levels of polish.

What emerges from this review is that the essential characteristics that would have conditioned the choice of Alpine jades when producing socially-valorised polished axeheads were the toughness and fineness of grain, which would have given the cutting edge a resistance that was incomparably higher than that achieved by other types of rock in the region.

As for the structure, the colour, the length and the degree of polish of the axeheads, these appear to be ‘secondary levels of the fact’ (to use André Leroi-Gourhan’s phrase), which could be modified and reinterpreted according to the ideological conceptions of the societies around which they circulated. However, the preference accorded to certain jadeitites in the Paris Basin, Brittany, Germany and Great Britain allow us to suggest that the producers and consumers of these axeheads shared in common the use of reproducible (and thus scientific) criteria to identify jade-jadeitites, which allowed them to select the most beautiful jades, not only at the source areas but also from among the range of Alpine axeheads as they travelled around.
The conclusion of this study is therefore nuanced, pointing out that while all the users of Alpine jade axeheads were united in using the same raw materials and physical properties, their social interpretation of these artefacts varied along the three main axes of circulation – towards north-west Europe, towards southern Italy and towards the Balkans.
excluded. We should therefore define each one of the qualities of Alpine jades individually, in seeking to rank them in order to understand their relative value during the Neolithic and their respective influence on the long-distance circulation of polished axeheads.

This chapter starts by considering the ways in which jades would have been recognised at or near the sources of the raw material, then goes on to discuss their variability in texture and colour, the investment of time in creating axeheads of different lengths and in using different manufacturing techniques, and finally the different levels of polish.

What emerges from this review is that the essential characteristics that would have conditioned the choice of Alpine jades when producing socially-valorised polished axeheads were the toughness and fineness of grain, which would have given the cutting edge a resistance that was incomparably higher than that achieved by other types of rock in the region.

As for the structure, the colour, the length and the degree of polish of the axeheads, these appear to be ‘secondary levels of the fact’ (to use André Leroi-Gourhan’s phrase), which could be modified and reinterpreted according to the ideological conceptions of the societies around which they circulated. However, the preference accorded to certain jadeitites in the Paris Basin, Brittany, Germany and Great Britain allow us to suggest that the producers and consumers of these axeheads shared in common the use of reproducible (and thus scientific) criteria to identify jade-jadeitites, which allowed them to select the most beautiful jades, not only at the source areas but also from among the range of Alpine axeheads as they travelled around.

The conclusion of this study is therefore nuanced, pointing out that while all the users of Alpine jade axeheads were united in using the same raw materials and physical properties, their social interpretation of these artefacts varied along the three main axes of circulation – towards north-west Europe, towards southern Italy and towards the Balkans.

Avant d’étudier les grandes séries de jades alpins du Piémont – témoins d’une production intensive qui a circulé en Europe occidentale pendant près de trois millénaires – les auteurs proposent une typologie fonctionnelle des différentes catégories de témoins archéologiques représentés dans les exploitations, les campements et les habitats permanents.

L’approche typologique est fondée à la fois sur des observations ethnoarchéologiques en Nouvelle-Guinée – où les mêmes catégories d’outillage ont pu être observées en action, dans des situations actuelles – et sur des expérimentations, pour confirmer le bien-fondé des hypothèses et des interprétations, en vérifiant que les rejets et les stigmates sont bien identiques à ceux des pièces archéologiques.

La présentation des différents outils mis en œuvre et des rejets de production suit l’ordre logique des chaînes opératoires mises en évidence (extraction par le feu, mise en forme par taille au percuteur dur ou par sciage), finition par bouchardage et par polissage, production d’outils de substitution (grattoirs emmanchés), utilisation des lames polies, entretien des outillages polis, bris, réutilisation et recyclage des fragments.

Le large panorama proposé couvre donc toutes les successions techniques depuis l’extraction et la première mise en forme des ébauches sur les gîtes de matière première jusqu’à la finition des lames polies et leur utilisation dans les villages de vallée. Dans ce contexte, les outils sont montrés en action dans des systèmes techniques où chaque étape a des conséquences sur les suivantes.

Finalement, c’est une véritable grille de lecture des outillages, des produits et des rejets qui est proposée. Son application aux sites néolithiques producteurs et consommateurs en Piémont devrait permettre d’approcher les questions fondamentales de l’origine des fabricants de lames, de la segmentation des chaînes opératoires dans l’espace, du contexte social de production, de la spécialisation et des conditions de transfert des matières premières, des ébauches et des outils.

Cette approche fonctionnelle est donc le préliminaire indispensable à la comparaison des sites archéologiques piémontais entre eux, à la restitution des fonctionnements économiques à l’intégration des techniques dans les organisations sociales et aux idées imaginaires que les producteurs d’ébauches et de lames se font de leur industrie et de leurs outillages.


Typology of Alpine jade products: questions of vocabulary

Abstract

Before examining the range of industries based on exploitation of the Alpine jades from the Piedmont – the source of the polished axeheads that had circulated around western Europe for nearly three millennia – the authors present a new functional typology for the various kinds of archaeological evidence left behind by these activities at the extraction areas, in the camp sites and in the permanent settlements.

The approach is based on ethnoarchaeological observations in New Guinea (where the same categories of tools can be observed in present-day situations) and on experimental work, undertaken to assess the validity of the interpretative hypotheses and to check whether the manufacturing traces that are thus produced on finished items and on rejected roughouts and flakes are identical to those seen on archaeological specimens.

The presentation of the scheme for the various tools and production waste follows the logical order of the chaînes opératoires involved in manufacture: fragmentation of blocks through fire-setting (and hence thermal shock) or by hammering with a heavy hammer, treatment of the core, roughing-out using hard-hammer percussion or by sawing, evaluation of the quality of the raw materials, advanced roughing-out by pecking, and finishing by grinding and polishing; production of substitute tools (hafted scrapers) ; and the relative intensity of the polish, the maintenance of polished tools, and the breakage, re-use and recycling of fragments.

Within this context – which describes a veritable economy of the raw material – tools are shown in action, in technical systems where each stage in the manufacturing process has a consequence for the following stages.

Finally, what we are proposing to create is a technical key for enabling people to recognize and understand the manufacturing tools, the products and the waste material from production. Its application to the Neolithic sites in Piedmont where the producers and consumers lived should therefore help us to approach the fundamental questions concerning the origin of the people who made the axe- and adze-heads; their movements between their permanent villages and the sources of the Alpine jades; the spatial segmentation of the chaînes opératoires; the social context of production; individual and regional specialisation; and the conditions under which raw material blocks, roughouts and finished objects moved around.

This functional approach thus provides the indispensible basis for undertaking site-by-site comparisons within the Piedmont, for reconstructing how part of the communities’ economy functioned and how exchanges were carried out, and for integrating techonology within social organisation. It also gives us an insight into the mental constructs dreamed by the people who engaged in the specialised activities of producing roughouts and finished axe- and adze-heads.

The jadeitites of Syros (Cyclades, Greece)

In 2005, M. D. Higgins proposed that the source of the polished axeheads of jadeitite that had been found in Greece may have been the island of Syros. This was based solely on macroscopic inspection and comparison.

As part of the JADE 2 Project, prospection was undertaken on Syros, Tinos and Sifnos, the three Cycladic islands where geologists had mentioned the presence of jadeitites or rocks containing jadeite, within the Cycladic Blueschists Unit. This fieldwork rapidly showed that Tinos and Sifnos could be eliminated and that it was only within the ophiolitic mixture of Kambos, at the north of Syros, that genuine ‘boudins’ – bulbous, free-standing blocks – of jadeitite, retromorphosed to varying degrees, and of sufficient size to have been exploited during the Neolithic, are to be found.

On Syros, the primary outcrop of jadeitite is strictly localised within two narrow bands around 100 metres long; the rock also occurs in the form of secondary deposits, in the stream bed between Kambos and the bay of Lia. All the blocks had been tested, to varying degrees, using a hard hammer; however, the small number of debitage flakes, of hammerstones and of roughouts suggests a production that was episodic and of very secondary importance. Elsewhere on the island of Syros, the local jadeitite seems to have been little used during the Neolithic, probably because of its mediocre quality for flaking and polishing.

The jadeite is represented in 120 raw material samples among the totality of samples analysed using diffuse-reflectance spectroradiometry. The comparison of the spectra of the Syros jadeitites with Alpine specimens in the reference collection allows us to argue that the chance of confusion between Syros and Alpine jadeitites is low, and always below 20%. Moreover, the comparison between the Syros raw material spectra and those obtained for jade axeheads found in Bulgaria and Rumania reveals that there are no convincing grounds for claiming Syros as the source area for these Balkan polished axeheads.

Variable degrees of albitization and chloritization, small presence of white mica and rutile in titanite, in some cases also occurrence of retrograde analcime seems to be characteristic petrological signs for the jadeitites or rocks megascopically resembling those from Syros island. Titanite and zircon represent typical accesory minerals. Very low contents of P2O5 seem to be a characteristic quality from the geochemical point of view.

The arguments – as much archaeological as spectroradiometric – are thus strong for proposing an Alpine source for the polished jade axeheads found in south-east Europe, and for a production on Syros that was limited or negligible. The Syros material shows evidence for testing the stone to see how it could be shaped, rather than for the large-scale production of axeheads for long-distance exchange.

The nephrite axeheads of the Pyrenees: the case of  Bédeilhac (Ariège)

Old excavations by Romain Robert at the cave of Bédeilhac produced a series of 105 polished stone tools, of which the majority were of Pyrenaean nephrites, worked at the cave. According to the associated pottery, which is typical of the final Epicardial and the Montbolo Group, and to the stratigraphic context of the finds, the chronological context of this industry could cover the fifth millennium BC.

Sixty nine polished stone tools and fragments thereof were subjected to spectroradiometric analysis, which revealed that most were of actinolite amphibolite-schists, followed by nephrites, jade-nephrites, other amphibole rocks and a small proportion of miscellaneous rock types, including some that had been imported.

The raw material sources had probably been accessed directly, although they need not necessarily have been abundant, nor easily reached. This is suggested by the fact that the polished axeheads had often been reused and recycled, almost to the point of complete exhaustion. The exploitation was generally expedient in nature, using simple techniques: sawing and roughing-out using a hammer and anvil. The polish was effected to a limited degree and to a low sheen, reflecting the rapid production of usable tools, using the minimum amount of time necessary. The commonest tool type – as is typical where there had been direct access to raw materials – is a partly polished flake, with the polish being applied to one edge. These are followed in frequency by the small and medium-sized axeheads, of which a number had resulted from the re-shaping of larger axeheads that had broken during use. The instability in the use of different types of tool suggests that tool production was sometimes expedient and that it was consistently accorded a low social value. Among the small polished axeheads, those with a triangular or oval shape seem to follow a relative norm, while the shape of the rare large axeheads could have been inspired by certain Alpine jadeitite axehead types (namely Bégude, Altenstadt-Greenlaw and Puymirol).

Two long sawn bars constitute remarkable exceptions in this panoply of tools used to work wood (and perhaps also hides, in the case of the tranchet blades). The sawing was achieved by using plaques of sandstone of decreasing thickness in order to deepen, step by step, the long U-profiled cuts – a technique that would have required a considerable investment of time. The status of these two long roughouts that have been ‘abandoned’ – one being 27.2 cm long, the other 26.9 cm long – is debatable, since these exceptional objects do not follow the technical norms and the social context of the rest of the tool assemblage.

The proportion of broken roughouts in the heavy stone tool assemblage shows that at Bédeilhac, production was undoubtedly in excess of what the people who worked the Pyrenaean nephrites needed for their own use. However, this surplus, which was fed into the network of axehead circulation within a maximum radius of 200 km, can only represent a small part of this traffic in axeheads. The spectroradiometric analyses and the regional comparisons show that, in effect, the full range of raw materials covered by the term ‘Pyrenaean nephrites’ is not present at Bédeilhac; instead, the raw materials here are of fairly mediocre quality, with the exception of the two large sawn bars.

Between the Agly massif to the east and the Arize massif to the west, other sites where Pyrenaean nephrites were worked need to be researched in order to flesh out the picture of a production that was original and fairly large-scale in nature, but whose products circulated only over short and medium distances, in contrast to the Alpine jades that circulated up to 1200–1700 km away from the sources as the crow flies.

Archaeologists lack a protocol for systematically attributing quartzite artifacts to particular geologic sources of the material. This paper, in an effort to begin to remedy that situation, reports the preliminary results of a petrographic study of quartzite samples from the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB), Colorado. In that region, the overwhelming predominance of quartzite (often > 90 per cent) at most archaeological sites has hampered efforts to ascertain with any certainty the mobility strategies of Paleoamerican (and later) residents. In this study, qualitative and quantitative characterization of texture and grain composition of 50 UGB quartzite specimens led to the identification of six statistically distinct groups of samples. The groups are not arbitrary divisions of the data set; rather, they are meaningful from geologic, geospatial, chronological, and human-behavioral perspectives.

PETREQUIN P., PETREQUIN A.M., CINQUETTI M. et PRODEO F., 2017.- La Balma di Rosso à Melle : une introduction aux exploitants des jades du Mont Viso, in : P. Pétrequin, E. Gauthier et A.M. Pétrequin (ed.), Jade. Objets-signes et interprétations sociales des jades alpins dans l'Europe néolithique. Les Cahiers de la MSHE Ledoux, 27, Dynamiques territoriales, 10, Besançon, Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté et Centre de recherche archéologique de la vallée de l'Ain, tome 3 : 139-158

Dans le contexte de la circulation des jades alpins en Europe occidentale, le massif du Mont Viso constitue certainement l’épicentre de l’aire de production. Les sources de matières premières – affleurements primaires en altitude entre 1700 et 2400 m ou bien gîtes secondaires dans la moraine du Pô et son cours supérieur – sont maintenant bien connues, comme les modalités d’exploitation sous la forme d’expéditions saisonnières. Mais des exploitants eux-mêmes, nous ne savons à peu près rien.

Cependant, depuis les années 1980, les prospections dans les avant-monts du massif entre 600 et 1400 m d’altitude ont permis de mettre en évidence des sites archéologiques discrets et fugaces, où seuls sont représentés des fragments d’ébauches et des éclats de finition des lames avant ou pendant le bouchardage. Ces sites, difficiles à découvrir en forêt caducifoliée, correspondent à des petits abris-sous-roche ou à de modestes sites de plein air, situés en forêt, à l’écart des principaux sentiers d’accès  aux exploitations de jade.

Dans le cas de Melle/Balma di Rosso, la fréquentation d’un abri-sous-roche  était probablement épisodique et liée à l’exploitation de la forêt, du gibier et du poisson, davantage qu’à la production d’ébauches. Pourtant, là encore, quelques poignées d’éclats de taille et des ébauches brisées semblent indiquer une activité secondaire pratiquée lors des déplacements en moyenne montagne boisée : la mise en forme finale d’ébauches bouchardées.

On devrait alors considérer que, probablement dès le dernier tiers du VIe millénaire, les avant-monts du massif du Mont Viso ont été parcourus plus ou moins régulièrement par les producteurs d’ébauches, pour des activités moins directement liées à l’exploitation des jades : la chasse, à forte valorisation symbolique dans le monde des hommes, pourrait avoir été la raison principale de la fréquentation de la forêt primaire entre les plaines du Pô et l’arc alpin, jusqu’à près de 2700 m d’altitude. Lors de ces activités hors des terroirs cultivés, les producteurs emportaient parfois une ébauche et un percuteur et profitaient des haltes pour en terminer la mise en forme avant le bouchardage final et le polissage, un travail plus fastidieux, réalisé dans les ambiances villageoises.

On peut même se demander si cette forme d’exploitation du massif – d’ailleurs générale dans l’arc alpin – n’est pas la raison première de l’identification des gîtes de jade dès la deuxième moitié du VIe millénaire.


La Balma di Rosso at Melle: an introduction to the people who exploited the jades of Mont Viso

Abstract

In the context of the circulation of Alpine jades in western Europe, the massif of Mont Viso certainly constitutes the epicentre of the area of production. The sources of the raw materials – primary outcrops between 1700 and 2400 m in altitude, and secondary deposits in the moraine of the Po and its upper course – are now well known, as are the ways in which they were exploited, during seasonal expeditions. But as for the people who were exploiting the rock, we know next to nothing.

However, since the 1980s, our prospections on the lower slopes of the massif, between 600 and 1400 m in altitude, have led to the discovery of small, ephemeral archaeological sites, some represented just by fragments of axehead roughouts and by flakes resulting from the final flaking of the roughouts prior to, or during, the process of pecking. These sites, which are hard to spot in the deciduous forest, comprise small rock shelters and modest open-air sites, situated in the forest, away from the principal access routes to the jade exploitation areas. 

In the case of Balma di Rosso at Melle, the use of a rock shelter was probably episodic and linked more to the exploitation of the forest, to hunting and to fishing, than to the production of roughouts. However, the presence of several fistfuls of flakes and of broken roughouts seems to indicate that a secondary activity was indeed occurring there, in the midst of the forested mountain terrain: namely, the final shaping of roughouts that had been pecked into shape.

It must be imagined that, probably from as early as the final third of the 6th millennium BC, the lower slopes of the Mont Viso massif were frequented on a more or less regular basis by the makers of these roughouts, for purposes that are less closely related to the exploitation of jades. Hunting – which held strong symbolic significance in the world of men – may well have been the principal reason why people were going into the primary forest between the plains of the Po and the high Alps, and were climbing almost as high as 2700 m. In addition to this activity, which went on beyond the areas of cultivation, the hunters will sometimes have carried with them a roughout and a hammerstone, and used the times when waiting for prey to complete the roughing-out process before taking the roughout back to the village to undertake the more time-consuming processes of final-stage pecking and polishing.     

This raises the question of whether this way of exploiting the massif – i.e. principally for hunting, an activity common to the whole Alpine arc – might explain how the source areas of jade came to be identified during the second half of the 6th millennium.

The Neolithic site of Alba has produced over a thousand tools made from Alpine jades, collected as unstratified finds during clay extraction. The abundance of these artefacts (which are dispersed among three museums, namely the Pigorini Museum in Rome, the Federico Eusebio Museum in Alba and the Museum of Antiquities and Piedmont Region Archaeological Department, Turin) and their excellent condition makes this collection indispensable for helping us to understand the production and circulation of roughouts from the Massifs of Mont Viso and Mont Beigua. Alba occupies a strategic position, roughly equidistant between these raw material sources.

Even though most of these artefacts (roughouts, hammerstones, polished axe- and adze-blades and chisels) had been collected in the past without attention being paid to their stratigraphic context, the stylistic and chrono-cultural study of the pottery from Alba shows that the main period of occupation spans the second half of the 6th millennium and the whole of the 5th millennium BC. Later episodes of occupation are comparatively minor.

Typological study of the axe- and adze-heads from Alba leads one to the same conclusion: the communities who lived here were engaged in the production of objects of Alpine jades, and their circulation around western Europe, at the beginning and during the floruit of this phenomenon.

From the thousand artefacts made of Alpine jades that make up the assemblage from Alba, some 454 were selected in order to address several key questions: what role had the inhabitants of Alba played in the networks over which roughouts from Viso or Beigua circulated? Did they have direct access to the raw material sources? Had they developed a specialisation in the production of Alpine jade artefacts? How did they manage their own use of jade tools?   

Having undertaken spectroradiometric analyses and macroscopic examination of these objects, comparing them with the Projet JADE reference collection of raw material samples, the authors have concluded that most are made from high-quality jades originating on Mont Viso. Those made of jades from Mont Beigua are in the minority, and they give the impression that this material was used in a complementary manner, to tide the inhabitants over when they had difficulty in securing a regular supply of roughouts from Viso.

The technical study of the jade artefacts – in particular, of roughouts and hammerstones – allows us to recognise that the inhabitants of Alba had a definite specialisation: they obtained roughouts from other communities that were closer to Mont Viso, with direct access to high-altitude extraction sites (the valleys of  Bulè and Porco), and also from the moraine of Paesana in the high valley of the Po, and they hammered them into their final shape. The amount of roughouts that had broken during this stage of production, and of large polished axe- and adze-blades that had broken during use, leave no doubt that the scale of production exceeded the immediate needs of the communities living at Alba.

The undeniable fact that Alba played an intermediary role in the spatially-extensive production process – a process that involved extraction and initial roughing-out by flaking at the source areas, then a first-stage reduction of the roughouts by light hammering at temporary camps on the edges of the Mont Viso massif, followed by final hammering at permanent settlements in the valley – does not mean, however, that the supply of roughouts and the circulation of semi-finished products was regular or smooth. Difficulties in obtaining supplies and discontinuities in the circulation process are indicated at Alba (70km from Viso as the crow flies) by the careful way in which polished tools were used, maintained and recycled when they broke. This ‘economical’ husbanding of the resource was not so very different from that practised by communities several hundreds of kilometres from Mont Viso who were importing Alpine jade objects (Sammardenchia).

Thus, Alba represents a secondary production centre – one among others that are known (e.g. Rivanazzano) or suspected to have existed – where roughouts were given their final transformation and the finished items were released into circulation. This took place within complex networks extending over several hundred kilometres from west to east across the Piedmontais production area. The geographical extent of this zone of secondary production implies that several hundred men were engaged in the task of hammering roughouts into shape. This, in turn, suggests that primary producers, who had direct access to the high-altitude source areas, could focus their efforts on extracting the jades and on the initial roughing-out process by flaking. These people would have organised the risky, short-term expeditions up the mountain that would only have been possible during the summer.

This technical complementarity in the production process at a regional level, and the implied involvement of a very large number of producers (both primary and secondary), will have provided the necessary – albeit not sufficient – conditions for the circulation of jade objects on the European scale.

In the Bistrița valley, a variety of different materials were used for producing knapped tools during the Upper Palaeolithic. Among these, chert is the most common. Previous research carried out in this region has indicated the possible use of flint imported from the Moldavian Plateau (over 100km away) although until now no petrographic studies have been carried out in order to verify this assumption. More recently the authors of this paper have suggested also the Dobrudja region (300km away) as an origin of some lithic artefacts. Indeed, the material from which some of the chert artefacts in the Bistrița valley were made is of good quality and visually appears very similar to the flint found in the Moldavian Plateau. In order to help determine the provenance of the chert artefacts, some of the suspected imported artefacts were observed in thin section. They were compared to thin sections of geological samples from known sources of Moldavian flint, Balkan flint from the Dobrudja region, and local cherts. The results of this study support the theory of imported flint from the Moldavian plateau as well as the Dobrudja region, although the majority of material appears to be of local origin.

We are pleased to announce the next  "International Symposium on Knappable Materials: From toolstone to stone tools", previously held in Romania and Barcelona. It will take place between November 7th and 12th. Presentations should be either in person or online.
The Symposium will take place in Buenos Aires, with an optional fieldwork to the outcrops of Necochea, where the nearest lithic raw material sources have been located. The field trip will be organized by local researchers. 
Web page:  www.imhicihu-conicet.gob.ar/iskm2017/
E-mail: [email protected]
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Organizing Committee

Nos es grato anunciar el próximo "International Symposium on Knappable Materials: From toolstone to stone tools", cuyas dos últimas sedes fueron Rumania y Barcelona. Tendrá lugar entre el 7 y 12 de noviembre del 2017, siendo la participación presencial o virtual.
El Simposio se desarrollará en Buenos Aires y contará con una salida opcional a recorrer las canteras próximas a Necochea, que son las más cercanas. El viaje de campo estará organizado por investigadores de la localidad.
Página Web del Simposio: www.imhicihu-conicet.gob.ar/iskm2017/
Correo de contacto: [email protected]
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Comité Organizador

Yabalkovo-Karabyulyuk site2 is situated in the central part of Upper Thrace, in the valley of the Maritsa River . The salvage excavations began here in 2000 as a part of the general project for studies along the Maritsa motorway (Leshtakov, K. I997:ll-12), when about an acre was excavated through trenches and the general contours ofthe Early Neolithic settlement3 were outlined. In 2002-05 the excavations in the same sector continued and were extended to other areas, as the northern part of the settlement was also crossed by a railway line and a parallel road. This report presents the main results from the 2000-05 excavations, which are essentially preliminary as construction works are still in progress. The prehistoric settlement is known in the literature since the second half of the lgth century in the time of the construction of Plovdiv-Edirne railway. The finds reported atthat time (Skorpil H. and K., 1898:88, 98) are kept in the Archaeological Museum in Sofia. Studied Early Neolithic settlem.;-; upper Thrace are not numerous, while unearthed open-air sites are few . Therefore, the excavations of every new site contribute important new information, ever more valuable in the concrete case. Beyond any doubt, the new topical results correlate the data coming from tells in Upper Thrace localized mainly in the foothills of the Sredna Gora Mountain. The situation of t

The benefits of heat treatment (the intentional heating of raw materials to increase workability) were first documented by Crabtree and Butler (1964). Subsequent work has confirmed that intentional and unintentional exposure to heat can alter siliceous stone macroscopically and microscopically (Luedtke 1992). Obvious effects of heat can include noticeable changes in color, luster, and workability. Intentional heating of chert can therefore produce results beneficial to the production of stone tools. Unintentional heating of stone debit age should produce similar changes. Such changes, specifically alteration of color and luster, may lead to misidentification of waste flakes recovered from hearth contexts. Therefore, this study seeks to identify some heat-induced changes of varieties of chert and quartzite commonly used throughout Vermont's prehistory. Such information is necessary in order to correctly identify and interpret debit age recovered from hearth contexts.