Conclusions and future work

Introduction

Long before pottery came into use, stone functioned as an essential component of the technology of early human groups in the Mediterranean. Its use for tools in game hunting, plant collecting and grain processing activities, as well as in a multitude of manufacturing activities (drilling, scraping, cutting, etc.) during the Pleistocene and the early Holocene left indelible imprints on the human landscape of the Mediterranean Basin, for example in stone quarries, flake scatters, and other types of deposit.

As a consequence, stone tools have long played a primary role in the process of identifying human presence, movement, and communication. In fact, without the aid of their stone tools, it would never have been possible to track the presence of humans or to reconstruct their movements and intentional displacements (e.g., colonizations) in the Mediterranean. Nor would it ever be possible to reconstruct the socio-economic base of their foraging and settled life. Because of the enduring character of stone, it has been possible not only to recover but to construct a diverse series of taxonomies of stone implements, upon which chronologies of various areas in the Mediterranean and Europe have been built. Thus it would not be an exag-geration to speak of a “stone-based” history of the human species during the Pleistocene and early Holocene periods, without which the earlier “pre-pottery”

human developments would have been lost. Stone continued to be used through-out the later Neolithic and Bronze Age, following the appearance of pottery and metals. The replacement of stone tools and weapons by metals took place in several sequential stages, depending on various contextual, social, and cultural factors. For certain classes of tools (e.g., milling instruments), replacement never occurred and these implements continued to be manufactured in stone throughout antiquity and right down to the pre-industrial era. Chert continued to be used until the 1960s in various Mediterranean settings, where chert flakes were set as cutting tools into

threshing sledges (e.g., Karimali 1994). For all these reasons, stone and stone tools hold a prominent place in any discussion about human presence in the Mediterranean.

This chapter summarizes efforts to understand the history and social uses of stone and stone tools, mainly during the Holocene era (from 10,000 B.P. onward).

Rather than serving as a comprehensive overview, an overwhelming task, this chapter provides an introduction to lithic use in the prehistoric Mediterranean, and to the myriad theoretical issues surrounding its study. In this narrative, lithics are not severed from their links to production, function, and meaning.These stone tools themselves also have “histories,” as they undergo several stages of procurement, exchange, and manufacture until they are transformed into tools and discarded.

Stone tools were made to be used and they were used in a meaningful way. Accord-ingly a history of lithics cannot be envisioned as distinct from the social history of their use by human beings.

Chipped and Ground Stone Tools:Two Complementary Industries

Stone tools comprise a distinct analytical category, distinguished from other toolkits by material (e.g., bone tools). They are divided into two categories, chipped stone and ground stone, on the basis of differences in production techniques and the mechanical properties of the materials used for their production. Silicates (obsidian included) exhibit a concoidal fracture and thus are suitable to flint-knapping, whereas igneous and metamorphic rocks are more suitable to pecking, polishing, and flaking as well (Table 8.1; Runnels 1985c).

This distinction, echoing a shift of interest toward issues of production over recent decades in Europe, is adopted strictly for analytical purposes, in order to Table 8.1 Chipped and ground stone industries: raw materials and production techniques Raw materials Production techniques Lithic categories

I. Silicates (e.g., flint, 1. Percussion Chipped or flaked stone tools (sickles, chert, jasper, chalcedony, 2. Indirect percussion drills, end-scrapers, projectile points,

obsidian) 3. Pressure etc.)

IIa. Igneous and altered 1. Pecking Ground-stone tools (axes, adzes volcanics (e.g., andesite, 2. Flaking chisels, hammers, querns, mortars, basalt, serpentinite, 3. Grounding polishers, whetstones, etc.) diabase, microgabbro, 4. Polishing

gabbro, diorite, 5. Perforating microdiorite etc.)

IIb. Metamorphics (marble, amphibolite)

IIc. Sedimentary (e.g., sandstone, limestone)

182 EVAGELIA KARIMALI

stress differences in the technological infrastructure (the “know-how”) underlying the manufacture of the two industries. All tools, however, were used in a con-tinuum of economic and consumption behavior that pertained to a set of different but integrated activities (for example, the activities involved in farming) of the prehistoric community (Table 8.2). Specifically, chipped and ground stone tools:

• had complementary uses, as they were sequentially employed in integrated economic activities (e.g., the farming cycle); thus sickle elements made of flint (chipped stone) were used for harvesting, whereas millstones made of igneous or metamorphic rocks (ground stone) were used in grinding cereal to flour;

• were both elements of more complex, synthetic implements (e.g., flint blades or ground stone tools hafted in antler sleeves); and

• were sometimes employed for the production of each other (e.g., hand-stones were used in flint-knapping as percussion tools, hammerstones for pecking and manufacturing ground stone tools and metal (Astruc 2001).

Chipped Stone Technologies

Raw materials and exchange networks

Chipped stone tools comprise a distinct tool category, with manufacture charac-terized by flaking techniques. The most common materials used were obsidian, flint and chert, jasper, chalcedony, and, more rarely, quartz.

Obsidian, a natural volcanic glass of amorphous crystalline structure, stems from a limited number of geological sources in the Mediterranean (Melos and Giali in the Aegean; Lipari, Sardinia, Pantelleria, and Palmarola in the central Mediter-ranean; Göllü Dag˘ and Nenezi Dag˘ in Cappadocia, central Anatolia, and Nemrut Dag˘ in eastern Anatolia; modern Ethiopia and Eritrea – Renfrew et al. 1968; Tykot 1996; M.-C. Cauvin et al. 1998; Betancourt 1999; see Figure 8.1); this configura-tion has been demonstrated by characterizaconfigura-tion studies carried out over the past forty years (Williams-Thorpe 1995). Obsidian was extensively traded in prehistory through interregional networks in the form of prepared cores or pressure-ready blades to be used as cutting and hunting implements (knives, razors, bifacial arrow-heads, etc.). Mediterranean obsidian networks never formed a single unified system, but remained regional and “self-contained” cultural zones with minimal overlaps (see Renfrew et al. 1965; Tykot 1996).

As a result of its successful “fingerprinting,” obsidian has been particularly applicable for use in exchange modeling. Several exchange mechanisms have been proposed, based on fall-off patterns of quantitative and qualitative variables against the distance of a site from a source (Renfrew et al. 1968; Torrence 1986; Perlès 1990). Current work is revising central concepts used in past studies (e.g., distance calculated in kilometers), instead favoring time and region-specific models (Ammerman and Polglase 1993; Karimali 2000; 2001).

Table 8.2 The main tool types encountered in Mediterranean assemblages, the type of activity involved, and the type of raw material used

Motion Tool type Raw material Activity

I. Reaping I. Sickle elements Silicates I. Harvesting II. Grinding, II. Millstones, querns, Igneous, II.

milling grinding stones metamorphics, Pre-Pottery Neolithic:

sedimentary Grinding (red ochre, minerals and plant foods [seeds, vegetable etc.], Wright 1993).

Neolithic, Bronze Age:

Grinding grain to flour, mineral pigments, clay, salt, or for sharpening and smoothing celts, shells, and bone implements (Kardulias and Runnels 1995).

III. Pounding III. Mortars, pestles III.

• Pounding spices, salt, coloring matter, drugs, etc. (Runnels 1988)

• Dehusking emmer (Samuel 1999) IVa. Cutting IVa. Axe, adze, chisel Igneous and IVa.

volcanics Axes:

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A:

• Cutting, paring, wedging wood (Roodenberg 1983) Neolithic:

• Carpentry, hide and bone working (Roodenberg 1983; Wright 1993;

Perlès 2001:232)

• Tree clearance

• Deliberate breakage (“ritual” function?

Stroulia 2003).

“shaft-hole” axe Early Bronze Age

Aegean, Anatolia, and Italy:

• Ore mining/crushing and metalworking.

Table 8.2 Continued

Motion Tool type Raw material Activity

Middle Bronze Age:

IVb. Cutting IVb. IVb. Cutting (meat, fish,

Retouched/truncated/ hide etc). Light domestic

backed/unretouched tasks.

blades/flakes

IVc. Cutting plants IVc. Cutting IVc. “Glossed blades (reeds, grasses, bushes

and segments” etc.) for: roof and house

building activities, basketry for storage etc.

(Anderson-Gerfaud 1983; Perlès and Vaughan 1983).

V. Drilling V. Borers (drills), Silicates V.

(shell, stone microdrills • Beadmaking (Grace,

bone, ivory etc.) 1989–1990; Rosen, 1997;

Perlès 2001:223).

VI. VIa. Gravers Silicates VIa. Ivory, stone carving

Engraving/Incising (Rosen 1997; Kardulias

(bone, 1992).

ivory, soft

materials) VIb. Burins VIb. Bone working