Leaf Point from Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá

This is a Leaf Point from Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá (4,5×2,5×07 cm).

Paleolithic findings at Moravany were first considered in 1931, when two interested collectors, V. Vlk and H. Sonntag, recovered patinated flint artifacts from the ploughed fiels along the Vah valley. Lothar Zotz, who worked in Breslau at this time, visited some of the sites together with Vlk since 1935 . Zotz came back in 1940, at this time allready professor of prehistory at the German Karls-University in Prague, and excavated several sites until 1943. The main results of his research can be summarized as following: In Moravany there are sites from various Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes. Zotz was the first, who described an earlier phase at Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá with typical leafpoints and the  richer findings from a late Gravettian with shouldered points. Zotz also reconstructed the chaine operatoire, which started either from a broad triangular flake, but also from small triangular „bifaces“

 In 1946 Karel Absolon made excavations at Dlhá, and prepared drawing of artifacts for a later publication. Bárta’s revisory excavations in the 1960ies were more metricoulos than those of his forrunners, as he did not only collect leaf points, but also cores, flakes and blades. The most important class of retouched tools were leaf points with either flat retouch or partial flat retouch, including semi-finished points and fragments of points. As allready mentioned by Zotz, they were mostly made of local raw materials, such as (black to reddish) radiolarites, quartz and silicificated sandstone. Imported raw materials, obsidian and limnosilicite, were less frequent. „Atypical“ End-scrapers, side-scrapers, burins and combined tools were rare and non-diagnostic. The workshop character of the site was documented by the presence of semi finished products and debitage.

The leafpoints from Dlhá are unique and can not be easily integrated into the „Szeletian“ concept sensu strictu as a ”transitional” technocomplex . So far, in Europe,diagnostic triangular Moravany-Dlhá points are only known from the Moravany vincinity, from Vlčkovice in Western Slowakia and from isolated stray finds at Miscolc (Hungary) and at Brudersdorf (Austria). Their incorporation into an interstadial soil at Dlhá, first demonstrated by Lais in the 1937, indicates an Interstadial before or after the Pavlovian , which at Moravany nad Váhom is always incorporated in the pure loess. Zotz`s documentation and much of the archaeological findings (about 200 leaf points!) were lost when the German troops  were kicked out from Prague in 1945.

At Vlčkovice a triangular leaf point was found together with arched backed blades in an interstadial soil, dated to the Arcy-Denekamp episode (32-28 ka BP) and topped by a Gravettian industry in the upper parts of this soil. On the other hand at Trencianské Bohuslavice elaborated elongated leaf points have been clearly documented in a „Willendorf-Kostenki“ context at 19 ka BP.

Absolons drawings:

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Weaving

Two spindle whorls from the LBK of Lower Austria (diameter: 2,5 and 1,5 cm; about 5000 BC). At this time hand-spinning and loom-based weaving was fully established in Neolithic societies.

Perishable materials, including cordage, nets and textiles, have long been recognized as an important piece of forager technology in the Upper Paleolithic. Especially the role of textiles within prehistoric communities is thought to be socially, ideologically and culturally important. However such technologies are nearly invisible in the archaeological record because the organic materials are so rarely preserved.  This is unfortunate, because the simple presence or absence of such an enormous class of raw materials has vast implications for our understanding Paleolithic lifestyles.

Perishable materials comprise up to 95% of material culture in ethnographically documented forager groups (Owen 1995). Archaeological work at wet sites (lakes in the Alpine foreland, the La Draga site in Spain, bodies from the Iron Age in bogs), and other sites of extraordinary preservation (e.g. organic material from the salt mines in Austria, the Alpine Ice Man) indicates that the remains found in most archaeological contexts may be far from representative of the complete array of items used by prehistoric populations.

At Dzudzuana  Cave (Republic of Georgia) flax (Linum usitatissimum) fibers were recovered from four Upper Paleolithic occupations dating between 26 and 32 ka BP. These fibers had clearly been modified, cut, twisted and even dyed gray, black, turquoise and pink, most likely with locally available natural plant pigments.

Soffer and co-workers have studied female figurines from Middle-East Europe and argue that they are dressed in apparel that has been twined or knit. Soffer has also suggested that many Paleolithic antler and bone artifacts interpreted as hunting implements were actually used in the production of textiles. There are some data from microwear analysis to substantiate these arguments. Owen’s research on the division of labor during the German Magdalenian and her studies of bone needles and awls also suggest that plant materials played a significant role in Magdalenian.

Finally clay fragments imprinted with cordage, knots and woven fabrics come from several Pavlovian sites, including Dolni Vestonice and Pavlov (Czech Republic; 27ka BP). At Pavlov impressions of knotted nets survived in clay which maybe have been used to capture birds. The textiles, basketry, and cordage specimens represented in the impressions were made of plant rather than animal fibers, though an identification of the species used is impossible. These findings suggest that weaving technology of course dates back into the late Pleistocene.

Ohalo II, a submerged and well-preserved early “Epipaleolithic” site in the Sea of Galilee, Israel also contained cordage dated to about ~21 Ka BP.  The only surviving Palaeolithic fragments of ropes are preserved as apparent natural casts come from Lascaux (19 ka BP), but it has not been possible to determine the material used in its construction.

Who handled the work with perishable materials? Soffer suggests, that cross-cultural ethnographic data could indicate that these tasks were associated with women, but until now this remains speculative.

 

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Patterns in Prehistory

The analytical tools we use to evaluate the visible world determine the structure of our “reality”. If we image the human body with a CT-scanner (an anatomic 3-D view of the body) the results will differ from the results if a FDG-PET scanner (metabolic imaging of the body that uses radioactive glucose) is used. Nevertheless both results are valid in their own context, and the combination of both (FDG-PET/CT) may be more valid regarding the extend of a disease compared to only one imaging modality.

Knowledge and Interpretations of Archaeological patterns also depend on choice of analytical tools. This fact was nicely demonstrated by the 2009 thesis of Héloïse Koehler regarding Middle Paleolithic groups in Northern France during the Early Weichselian.

Koehler showed that the use of different analytic frames revealed different interpretative results. While the lithic assemblages are quite similar at a general scale of analysis, they look very different at a fine scale, at which five groups could be distinguished. Koehler proposes that these groups may reflect distinct technological traditions, included within similar cultural areas.

We are waiting for other publications that use new approaches to overcome outdated interpretations in prehistory. Such approaches could be inspired by an Epistological Constructivism that proposes that knowledge should be understood as socially construct, defined by practice and by the activities of and interactions between individuals. Knowledge in this definition becomes “fluid” and expandable and more scientific.

Unfortunately the thesis of Héloïse Koehler is not available via the www. A good overview, written by herself can be found at:

http://www.geo.uni-tuebingen.de/fileadmin/website/arbeitsbereich/ufg/urgeschichte_quartaeroekologie/publikationen/GFU/2011/013-032_GFU_Mitteilung20_WEB.pdf
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The Meaning of Colors

Colorful Neolithic arrowheads (largest example: 6×1,8×0,3 cm).

 All material productions are culturally, socially and physically embedded. From the ethnological record, we know that in traditional societies, raw material for stone tool production is not solely selected for its functional properties. A distinctive color, shape, or texture of the lithic raw material is often associated with a mythical and spiritual meaning. Colored stones or stones that are covered with colored pigments are suggested being charged with spiritual power.

Coloration by pigments seems to be an early trait of the human lineage. It seems now to be widely accepted, that these pigments were mainly used for non-utilitarian activities such as body painting, personal ornamentation, coloring of important artifacts (beads, tools) and rock surfaces.

Paleolithic men had five main colors at their disposal: yellow, red, brown, black and white. Manganese oxides were the most common inorganic pigments used for black painting. The only organic pigment preserved for black coloration is charcoal, which allows dating cave “art” with C-14. If there were other organic substances that were processed for coloration is unknown. Red (reddish brown and yellow-orange) pigments were produced from iron oxides, like hematite or limonite, and from ochre. White was very rare but could be obtained from kaolinite or illite (at Lascaux).

 In Africa the evidence for human ochre use extends back to the beginnings of the MSA, for example in the Kapthurin Formation, Kenya, dated to >240 k.a, at Twin Rivers, Zambia dated roughly to the same time interval. Excavations at Sai 8-B-11 in northern Sudan show yellow and red pigment lumps associated with grinding tools with traces of pigments and vegetal materials. The associated Sangoan core axe lithic ensemble is dated to 200 k.a BP.

In Europe the use of pigments by Neanderthals is well documented during the later phases of the Middle Paleolithic (from 120 to 40 k.a BP). Most often, these pigments consist of manganese dioxide, and more rarely ochre. Most of these sites date to the end of the Middle Paleolithic (OIS 4/3) and are attributed to the MTA and the Charentian Mousterian. In the 1980’s 14 small red dots were identified during excavations of the Middle Paleolithic site Maastricht- Belvédère, dating to 250 k.a BP. These samples were identified as hematite and may be the earliest examples of pigment use by Neanderthals.

 Graves with ochre bedding are known from Qafzeh Cave in Israel (900 ka BP), where the skeletal remains and burials of the first early modern humans in the Levant were found. From the 60 Upper Paleolithic graves in Europe, about 30 are connected with the use of ochre (Paviland, Krems Wachtberg, Brno II, Dolni Vestonice, Balzi Rossi, Kostenki 14 and 15, Sungir, Cro Magnon). In Lagar Velho (Portugal) a burial of a child, dated to the Gravettian at 25 ka BP was found. The four years old child was covered with red ochre and laid on a bed of burnt vegetation together with pierced teeth and marine shells. The burial of two newborns was found at the Krems Wachtberg Pavlovian site in Austria. The children were sprinkled with ochre and wrapped in skin, together with a necklace of mammoth ivory. The 27 000 years old grave was covered with a mammoth shoulder blade.

The exact meaning of these practices is unknown. Many traditional societies today regard the color red as symbolic of fertility or vitality. It is generally suggested that during the Paleolithic the color red may have been a symbol for blood and life and on a higher intellectual level a symbol of transformation. During the Upper Paleolithic, there was also a powerful symbolic relation between ochre and femininity regarding that many Paleolithic “Venus figurines” were painted with red ochre or hematite. The Venus from Mauern (Gravettian about 28 ka BP) is completely covered with a thick layer of ochre. Ochre was also found on the Venuses from the Grimaldi Caves (Gravettian / Epigravettian), and on the Venuses from Willendorf (Austria; Wachau; Kostenkian about 25 ka BP) and Laussel (Gravettian).

 Suggested Reading:

http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf33/petru33.pdf

http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/2822

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Epipaleolithic blade from Maroc

A large (14x4x1,5cm) Epipaleolithic blade from Maroc

The Epipaleolithic of theMaghreb is spanning the time from the LGM about 20000 ka BP until the Holocene. During this time span both temperate and wet climates, but also hyperarid conditions were present and men successfully coped with them. If settlement systems were stable over the whole period is somewhat unclear.

The exact time of the earliest occurrence of an Upper Paleolithic of the region is a matter of debate. At the Grotto d´Ifri n`Ammar, in the Moroccan Rif mountains, there are indications for an early upper Paleolithic before the Iberomaurusian (20 ka-10 ka BP), which has not been dated yet. Genetic evidence suggests that there may have been population exchange between the Maghreb, Cyrenaica, and theLevantduring or before the LGM. This has led to the idea that the Iberomaurusian culture spread from theNear East. However, the Iberomaurusian at Tamar Hat (Algeria) and Taforalt (easternMorocco) predates its appearance at Haua Fteah (Libya). More research is needed into the period immediately before the appearance of the Iberomaurusian acrossNorth Africa. Unfortunately, with the exception ofMorocco, this is unlikely to happen soon after the “Arabian spring”.

A number of lithic tools ( backed bladelets, segments) are in many ways very similar between the Iberomaurusian and the Capsian (10-7 ka BP). This has led some (Lubell 1995) to speculate that there is a strong continuity between the two industries.  In general geometrics increase from the Iberomaurusian to the Capsian. Tixier’s (1963) typology of the Epipaleolithic wisely does not seek for “Fossil directeurs” of either the Iberomaurusian or the Capsian but gives an exact description about the wealth and variety of artifact types, which clearly exceed the complexicity of the late European Paleolithic . Large backed or  semi-apruptly retouched blades, like the  example displayed here, are more common during the typical Capsian. Anyhow the inverse retouche of this artifact is a rare feature.

During the Iberomaurusian  blanks were detached from small single platform cores. Although there are some larger artifacts (> 10 cm), most tools are made from bladelets. Most of these microliths are backed bladelets. Some segemnts are also present. There are some thumbnail scrapers and burins . Geometric microliths are present but rather uncommon. Most implements would have been used in composite tools.

The Capsian beginns during the arid younger Dryas and  is traditionally divided into two horizons, the typical Capsian and the upper Capsian which are sometimes found in chronostratigraphic sequence. Some authors suggest that a time overlap of these entities may also be possible.

The typical Capsian is characterized by a significant blade based component (burins (ca. 25%), endscrapers (ca. 20%),, and large  backed tools). Backed bladelets are present in quantities of about 10-20%. Geometric microliths comprise about 10% of the outillage.

The Upper Capsian is characterized by abundant and varied geometric microliths and numerous forms of backed bladelets. Burins are fewer than during the typical Caspian, but there is much regional variability.

How Epipaleolithic ensembles refer to specific activities, ecological factors, site structure, style and culture, duration of stay and raw materials is still a matter of debates. There is a clear need for much more stratigraphic sequences, excavated with modern methods over the whole area.

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The developement of social complexicity in central Europe

Flanged Axe (17 x 4x 1,5cm); Southern Germany 1600 BC.

For only 2% of the human evolution, Europa could be considered as the “center of the world”(*) . During the Bronze Age, the continent was clearly at the periphery.

In nature, metals are hardly ever pure. Almost all copper ores contain some small proportion of arsenic, tin, zinc, antimony, or nickel, which mixes with the copper during smelting. These alloys are still dominated by copper, but all alloys have a lower melting point than pure copper.

“Bronze” is any alloy that is 85-95% copper, with the other 5-15% made up of mainly of tin or arsenic. It remains somewhat unclear when and how the mechanical properties of different bronzes were fully recognized and deliberately produced.  Bronze is easier to work, especially to cast, than pure copper. It has a lower melting point and is less prone to subsequent fragmentation due to blistering during casting.

In the earliest phase of bronze metallurgy, bronze was rarely used to produce weapons and tools; rather, it was used for prestige goods. This suggests the value placed on other qualities of the metal: possibly its texture and color, since the addition of tin gave copper a golden-brownish shine similar to that of gold.

In the Middle East, Arsenic ores were more common than tin ores which are virtually unknown in this region before 3000 BC. After this date, Cretan and Western Mediterranean bronzes were largely made with arsenic, Egyptian bronzes almost exclusively with arsenic, but Anatolian bronzes were made with tin and arsenic.

The earliest bronze artifacts known so far have been found on the Iranian plateau and are dated to the 5th millennium BC.  The “Bronze Age” begins in the last centuries of the fourth millennium BC in the Near East and the Aegean, when far-ranging trade networks were created. Such networks imported tin and charcoal to Cyprus, where copper was mined and alloyed with the tin to produce bronze. Bronze objects were then exported. Isotopic analysis of the tin in selected Mediterranean bronze objects indicates it came from as far away as Great Britain.

The Early Bronze Age of central Europe was up into an early phase from about 2300 to 2000 BC and a later phase from about 2000 to 1600 B.C. The Middle Bronze Age spanned the time between about 1600 and 1350 BC. Although central Europe was  at the periphery of the “Bronze Age World”, it was clearly involved into the technological, economic and ideological networks, which connected Europe with the Civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Aegean. The societies of central Europe were also deeply involved into a process of accelerated specialization and social stratification.  In addition central Europe offered important commodities and prestigious goods for the rest of the world:

Central Europe is rich in different copper sources: the eastern Alpine area, the Harz Mountains in central Germany, the northern Carpathians in eastern Slovakia, and the eastern Carpathians in Transylvania. This latter area probably provided most of the gold used in the Bronze Age of central Europe as well.

On the other hand, Europe has very few sources of tin. Sources already of importance during the Bronze Age were mined in the Erzgebirge along the border between Germany and Czech Republic, the Iberian Peninsula, the Bretagne in France, and Devon and Cornwall in southwestern England, roughly beginning at 2500 BC.

Salt became a highly valued commodity from the Bronze Age, if not earlier, as its uses expanded to food preservation, leather tanning, cloth dyeing and medicine. The number and size of confirmed salt production sites in Western Europe increased in the Bronze Age from 1800 BC onwards. Production for domestic needs was replaced by commercial production at this time. In Central Europe the famous salt mines at Hallein and Hallstadt in the Austrian Alps and the salt mines at Halle / Saale in central Germany began operating sometime between the 13th and 14th Centuries BC.

Baltic amber was traded following several roots over Europe and into the Middle East. Glob  pointed to a find of over 2 kg of amber in a Bronze Age pot on the shore between Saeby and Frederikshavn (Jutland) as a possible collection for export. At Qatna (Syria) baltic amber was  used for making  prestige artifacts found in a Royal tomb of c. 1340 BC.

Although central Europe played only a marginal role in the economic world system of the “Bronze Age”, several  links with “core areas” in the Middle East were clearly a significant factor in the development of its social and economic complexity.

(*) In reality there is nothing like a „center“ and a “periphery” of the world. For this post I use the term “center” to describe a region with high economic power, a place of maximal flow of commodities coordinated by of a group of individuals exerting the ideological and intellectual “hegemony” (in Antonio Gramscis sense).
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Conformism in prehistoric societies

Some microlithis from the North/West Sahara-traces of a long standing conformism in the production of such artifacts.

Prehistoric archaeology is often modeled through the paradigm of the collective. Conformistic collectives adapt to their environment and their decisions are made in the interest of reproductive success, risk minimization and competitive advantage. In this paradigm the actions and reactions of individuals are often reduced to passive and mechanistic actions.

Conformism stands for security: Security about the individual’s position within a group, security about the role that the individual has to play in its society, security in knowing how to do things-for example how to prepare hunting weaponry.

Conformism stands for stasis. Conformists refuse anything new and believe in the normative power of the facts. Non-Conformists imagine another kind of making their world. They may fail, and indeed often do, but if they have the creative power for convincing innovations, such innovations will be quickly adapted by others. Therefore Non-Conformists have indeed the virtue to change the world. What looks like a linear process in the archaeological record in retrospect is in reality an iterative adventure of Non-Conformists.

When the first microliths for composite weapons appeared in the MSA, these small artifacts were certainly considered as an innovation. The Howiesons Poort industry in S-Africa flourished at 65-60 k.a. (that are: 170 human generations) and vanished again. Earlier suggestions about climatic conditions, which should have triggered these processes, now seem to be an oversimplification. Such theories deny that individuals not only adapt to their environment but also manipulate and create their world according to their needs.

The Epipaleolithic in North Africa may have been invented at place or spread from the Levant or the Nile valley and the lithic inventories remained considerable stable over 15000 years. The archeological data, until now, can neither trace the origin of the Epipaleolithic, nor the individual action that created such tools for the first time. Unfortunately currently high resolution archaeological data are only rarely used to trace individual actions….

It would be worth while to study paleolithic societies in terms of conformism / non-conformism. To my knowledge no explicit archeological / anthropological theory about this topic exists . Or is there anyone on the www who knows more ?

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Resharpening, Retooling, Lithic Variability and Behavioral Patterns

Resharpening of stone artifacts as an important factor in determining lithic variability became an important issue in the 1980ies, although first considerations about this topic appeared in the literature as early as the 1867 (Reliquiae Aquitanicae). The phenomenon was also discussed on double patinated artifacts by A. Rust on the Yabroud material and by D. Garrod in the 1940ies and 50ies regarding the Paleolithic of the Carmel caves.

 After 1980, American archaeologists realized that lithic artifacts changed their shape as they were resharpened and that resharpening accounted much for the lithic variability of their samples. In this view different shapes found in archaeological collections are only “snapshots“of the same tool at different stages of reduction. In the 1990ies these results influenced the interpretations of the archaeological record in Eurasia and Africa, too.

 In general, lithic variability is now recognized as being related to factors like raw material availability, distance, and quality, duration of stay and site-function. Besides the countless factors that affect tool reliability and rejuvenation rates, resharpening is essentially a continuous process by which the shape of the original object is altered in a generally stepwise fashion.

 So far, the majority of studies of tool reduction in the Paleolithic have focused on demonstrating that various artifact typologies were artificial discretizations of a continuum in morphological variation and therefore heavily questioned the reality of “Paleolithic cultures”. A new generation of researchers now begins  to realize that incorporating the rejuvenation history of an artifact is both methodologically powerful, and at the same time behaviorally informative. Patterns in resharpening trajectories and the comparison of resharpening trajectories in different classes of tools, modeled by advanced mathematical algorithms will certainly help to formulate new hypotheses about behavioral patterns of our ancestors.

 Suggested reading:

 New Perspectives on Old Stones: Analytical Approaches to Paleolithic Technologies.

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Middle Paleolithic Convergent Scraper

This is a large scraper from a Non-Levallois blank with convergent ends and side retouches. It was found in the Department of Seine Maritime and is dated between 300 and 50 thousand years BP.

Convergent scrapers provide a good example how Archeologists make statments about the cognitive and social organisation of their Paleolithic makers by the interpretation of lithic data-sets. During this interprative process few observers could fail to be struck by the high level of symmetry and refinement exhibited by classic convergent scrapers from classical sites like High Lodge (OIS13), La Quina (OIS4/3), La Ferrassie) (OIS4/3). Intuitively, it seems inconceivable that these implements, some of which have remarkably elaborated points like classic handaxes are not deliberately designed tool forms made according to fixed mental templates. However, analysis of the High-Lodge material recently showed that pointed scraper forms may emerge at almost any stage of the reduction process simply as a consequence of two opposed retouched edges fortuitously converging to form an elongated projection. Thus High Lodge is not only an European key site in showing us, that typology is unreliable for assessing chronological questions but also important in demonstrating that different scraper classes do not represent discrete clusters of artifacts, but form a continuum.

 “Convergent scrapers, therefore, whilst appearing distinctive, can be interpreted parsimoniously, not as purposefully fashioned tools but rather the unintended outcome of progressive resharpening, and thereby lengthening, of different edges on scrapers until they invariably meet at a point. This is not to imply that convergent scrapers should be seen as a direct corollary of handaxes in terms of the manufacture or use of these objects However, as intensively retouched tools with pointed and handaxe-like plan outlines they provide an effective illustration of how highly patterned and apparently designed forms can result from “mindless” reduction processes” (Brumm and McLaren; JHE 2011).

Does this mean that our ancestors were unable to perform conscious and planned tasks? I think –No — It just means that they had developed a certain routine of resharpening opposed edges on scrapers until, invariably, two straight margins converge to form a point. The description of such routine actions is not very helpful in the definition of mental capabilities of these early humans (possible H. Heidelbergensis). Of course no one would try to define the mental capabilities of H. sapies by the banal routine actions of our every days life.

Suggested Reading:

http://www.oldstoneage.com/pubs/HLD/scrapred1.pdf

http://uow.academia.edu/AdamBrumm

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Middle European Copper Age flat axe

The first metal to be worked anywhere in Europe was copper. Smelted copper tools and ornaments began to circulate around 5000 BC. Copper Age flat axes are common in early Eneolithic societies of South East and Middle Europe. The rich findings of the Varna cemetries could indicate a  connection between power and metallurgy, but Varna remains an abnormality in the Archaeological record. The Late Neolithic to  Copper Age cultures of Hungary for example  lack any evidence for the existence of significant differences in social status beyond age, sex and individual identity. Therfore specialisation does not seem to automatically lead to a hirarchisation in early societies. For structural changes in settlement patterns during this time period, a model of tribal cycling has been proposed (W. A. Parkinson). In such a tribal society, kinship groups create a basic unit of organization within metallurgical knowledge will have spread without being confined to elites.

During the 3rd millennium BC tools, weapons and jewellery made of copper were a customary part of everyday life in the Mediterranea andCarpathian Basin.  North of theAlps, by contrast, metal objects are considered a rarit in archaeological context. Such objects were  found in graves only in exceptional cases, and these were usually small awls or different forms of jewellery made of copper sheet and copper flat axes as displayed in this post.

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