UDK903'12/'15(4-17)H634' Documenta Praehistorica XXVI i i Technology, mythology and the travels of the agricultural package in Europe Helena Knufsson Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Sweden Helena.Knutsson@arkeologi.uu.se ABSTRACT - A group of artefacts is used here to explore tfw possibilities of explaining how the spread of agricultural techniques affected the peoples of Northern Europe whenever and wherever they met tlie earliest fanners. An attempt is made to correlate movements of artefacts and their social and political contexts during the Neolithic. IZVLEČEK - S pomočjo arte)aktov raziskujemo možne razlage, kako je širjenje kmetovalskih tehnik vplivalo na prebivalce severne Evrope ko in kjer so se srečali z zgodnjimi kmetovalci Poskušamo ugotoviti povezave med širjenjem artefaktov in njihovim družbenim ter političnim kontekstom v neolitiku, KEY WORDS - Neolithisation; stone-tool assemblages; Central and Northern Europe INTRODUCTION The debate on the mechanisms behind the spread of agriculture from the Middle and Near East as summarised by Budja {1999), Auhan (/999) and others in the same volume, still provokes sharp expressions. The Scandinavian debate on this issue has partly suffered from lack of material explicitly supporting any of the "indigenisf or "diffusionisf hypotheses. In this respect, Scandinavia must remain one of the last margins of Europe where farming became an important issue only when all other really suitable regions had been exploited and established. Nevertheless, the "modern" ideas of exploitation of resources eventually reached even this end of the world. If we look at the problem from another point of view, i.e. that of the hunter-gatherers, we may say that Scandinavia was saved for millennia from the acquisitive, aggressive and nature-destroying policies which constitute the farming mentality. The faint traces which fit together with the remains from areas where domestication obviously first occurred relate to domesticated plants and animals, exotic raw materials and technology. We can follow a route for the biological parts of the so-called agricultural package from the Middle and Near East to northern Europe without encountering problems. We can also follow the spread of the first pottery, metal-working techniques and metal objects. The movement of stone tools is easy to follow, as it concerns exotic raw materials with well-defined sources. Flint-knapping technology has not yet been compared. The example that I give here is presented in an attempt to evaluate this aspect. Hitherto, in attempts to trace movements, stone-tool assemblages have been examined for tools made from imported raw materials. I would like to propose that special production modes could be "exported" or applied to local materials to serve the needs of "colonising or resource-surveying" groups. The point of departure is that long blades in southern contexts are closely connected with the appearance of agriculture, but they are also common in the Palaeolithic and Meso-lithic forager settings of northern Europe. It is actually the mode of their production, which reveals the producers or the "customers" who ordered them. Furthermore, if it was important to apply a special mode of production, we may ask if and how it was transmitted to other groups and wrhy it was so important These considerations cannot be evaluated without consulting different kinds of non-archaeolo- 117 Helena Knutsson gical sources and making predictions about human behaviour in different situations and in different contexts, in other wwds, without using ethno-analogies. THE SOUTHERN BLADES In the Near East and southern Europe, the regular blade industry was recognised as belonging to the farming-society setting. The blades serve as a chronological indicator bound to agriculture (see Cauvin 200036,' 3f$ Kastowski1994.595-601; Ozdogan & Gatsov 1998.209-232). The production of blades follows special methods and is visible in materials from at least Natufian and Pre-pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) up to the Uruk period in the Near East Very early extraction of obsidian is documented in Cappa-docia, and the consumption of the products in the Levant is dated around 9000 BC (Cauvin 2000,93$ Balkan-Atli el al 2000133-145)* The mines in Eastern Taurus at Bingol and at Lake Van later complete this extraction area, which supplied wide areas with obsidian {Cauvin 2000.96$Fig. 1). The standardisation of blade production started as early as 8000 to 6500 BC. Between 6000 and 5500 BC the sizes of the blades and cores increased, as well as the quality of the raw materials and the products (both for obsidian and for flint/chert, both of which were imported when needed) (Kodowski 1994. 143ff). Tliis production belongs to the phenomenon following the spread of agricultural techniques, which is sometimes called the "Agro-standard". The standardised production of blades was carried out in specialised workshops, the raw material was brought from obsidian and flint mines, and these blades, among other products, seem to have been handled in widespread market networks. The end of production and the breakdown of the market networks have been dated to the same time as the breakdown of towrn-states at the end of the liruk period at a 3100 BC (Kozkowski 1994.164ff; Rosen 198320$. There also existed a much simpler production of blades, bladelets and tools from local raw materials which was carried out on the same site in parallel with the above described specialised industry. This production can be followed all along the path of the Agro-standard or the agricultural package from the Near East to central and northern Europe, At the end of the Copper Age, local production and standardised production may have merged into the production of so-called Canaanean blades, produced in local settings, but from imported, very fine-grained flint and good-quality obsidian (Olie & Behm-Blanke 1992; Rosen 1983). An example of a production site bound to an "elite" setting is room 29 in the complex of Hassek Hoyiik on the Euphrates, where twrenty-eight cores prepared for the production of Canaanean blades were found in a pile beside a wall, while twelve others and production waste were distributed throughout the room. The layers with flint cores in the room were dated to the Uruk period and the Early Bronze Age. Very few7 blades were found in one of the other houses. In a layer dated to an earlier period, a cluster of ten blades was found. The flint source that could have been used as a quarry at Hassek was found only one hour's walk aw7ay from the settlement but the obsidian used for the implements here came from Bingol, wrhich is a much more distant source. The products (the blades) of the same blade-knapping method used in Hassek were found at distances of 600-1000 km from the settlement (Fig. 1; Behm-Blanke 1992,lj$ 216ff). Canaanean blades seem to have been used in some tasks related to harvesting, as sickles and also as insets in threshing sledges wrhich have been used up to modem tunes in some parts of the Near East (Skakun 1993; Weiner 1992 225$; Collin 1992.248$ Skakun 2000; Gurova 2000; Anderson 2000). The situation duringghe Neolithic in Greece, as described by Perles (1992), shows a similar complex picture. Local production occurred during the Early and Middle Neolithic, along with an emerging, longdistance movement of ready-made or semi-manufactured products from Melian (and Gialian) obsidian mines, western-Greek honey-flint products and other types of resource materials. Perles states that the cores for prismatic-blade production were made in a few workshops around the consumption areas and the blades were then produced at the settlement sites, a few at a time, and the cores were moved to be used at other sites as well (Paries 1992,125ffi. The use of obsidian as raw material for tools in the central and western Mediterranean regions is "strictly associated with pottery-using agro-pastoralists" from the Early Neolithic onwards (Tykot199646). Obsidian from four sources (Monte Arci in Sardinia; the island of Palmarola, west of Naples; the island of Li-pari north of Sicily; and the island of Pantellearia in the Straits of Sicily) supplied an area from North Africa through Corsica and Italy, and from the Dalmatian coast to south-western France. Tykot states that the movement of obsidian was involved in a prestige-goods exchange or market in the area tied to the development and establishment of the Neolithic economy. Tykot's source determinations show some 118 Technology, mythology and the travels of the agricultural package in Europe main directions in the movement of obsidian objects, mostly from Sardinia and Lipari towards the north, and some additional "exports" from the other sources in different directions (Fig. 1). In summary, it is possible to follow a development through the Mediterranean region, similar to that in the Levant and the Middle East, towards the specialised Neolithic production of large blades and use of raw-material resources in the establishment of a wide "production-consumption" network. CENTRAL EUROPEAN BLADES Although found already in the Palaeolithic, blades and blade production may also have been tied into a prestige-goods exchange in central Europe. A set- tlement-based production of blades occurs at the Gravettian and Magdalenian sites. A whole chain of production is detectable in the assemblages of these sites involving local materials. But there is also a tendency to bring ready-made products from distant sources, for example flint from mines in the Cracow region or chert from Bavaria {Svoboda etal 1994. 129ff; Klima etal 1997; Cziesla etal 1990)* The method of extracting the blades was via preparation, in which the facets on platforms produced suitable angles for detachment (Fig. 2). The Mesolithic groups of central Europe rejected the production of long blades. Instead, the technology concentrated on the production of microblades, mi-croliths and to a certain extent the use of the bipolar method for other types of tools. The connection be- KJ Tools from ihe same source ( Limestone arctK with tlim f Blades § Daggers J) Sickles O Axes Fig. 1. Sonne of the European flint, chert attd obsidian sources used during the Neolithic period and the approximate areas of distribution of artefacts from the sources. 119 Helena Knutsson tween long blades and their systematic use as harvesting tools is not described from the Palaeolithic and Mesolithlc contexts of central Europe. During the Neolithic, a more systematic production of long blades seems to have followed the agricultural package from the south-east The blades were found on the early Band Ceramic settlements, and the same mode of production can be followed via the Pre-pottery Neolithic, Sesklo, Karanovo (the white-painted pottery), Starčevo and Koros groups. An interesting fact is that production sites for these types of long blades are still missing, The conclusion must be that the blades were produced outside the settlements and that both the blades and the method of their production were imported into central-European settlements {Kaczanowska 1982; Kodowski 1982; Gatsov 1982; 1993; Perles 1987; Moundrea-Agrqfloti 1981; 1983; Tellenhach 1983; Todorova 1989; Ozdogan 1999). An important factor in the spread of production methods may have been the search for new sources of available raw material. As we have seen in the case of Hassek Hoyuk (and several other mines and production sites in the Near Eastern region), some raw materials and some products showed a tendency to spread throughout wide areas (see also Ozdogan 2000; Cauvin 2000). During the Early Neolithic, a systematic exploitation and spread of products from several flint, obsidian and other raw-material mines in Europe seem to have started (Fig. 1). As mentioned above, some of the sources, like the chert and flint deposits in Poland and Germany, were already exploited during the Late Palaeolithic. However, between 6000 and 2400 BC, mining was intensified and specialised production in the mining areas, with wide distribution areas, began. Some of the mining districts housed the production of blades; the best-known are Swieciechow, Saspdwr and Jerananowice in Poland and Le Grand Pressigny and Mouthiers 'le Martins" in France (Balcer 1981310-317; Bahel et al 1981J78-627; Desloges et al 1981474-509; Kelterhorn 1981228-232; Weiner 1981.233-235). Production sites for daggers, axes and adzes appeared in several parts of Europe, and whole flint nodules were brought to central Europe from northeastern flint sources in the Volhynian mountains ? ? sequence strategies <^> Fig, 2. lite production chain of Neolithic blades made on one-sided platform cores, Sotne of the production steps have left no remains or waste, lite method ofdecortification is not known. The reduction for platform is unsure. The blades and sotne cores are the only clear remains of production. The Swedish cores pictured are old stray finds, 120 Technology, mythology and the travels of the agricultural package in Europe {Moddetman 1981J08J; Schmid 1981141-165; Okusonetal. 1981,183-204; Becker& Weisgerber 1981.456-473; Apel 2000). Midgley {1992239JJ has proposed that systematically organised prospecting and extracting of flint around Europe based on specialisation, consumption groups and regional markets existed since the Early Neolithic, Band Ceramic period Specialists such as flint prospectors and "middlemen" or "agencies" were responsible for the production and distribution of goods, The flint mines and other extraction places in central Europe were found and described, with some exceptions, during the latter half of the 20th century, New ones are still being found and there are probably more to come. So the picture of their frequency and distribution across the continent is still to some extent guesswork. Intensively used sites for the production of specialised tools usually surround the known mines - we could call them factories. The extraction seems to have started in some places in the Late Palaeolithic {Alidgefy 1992239J; Balcer 1983), but the main period of use and systematic production was from the Early Neolithic to the Copper Age {lech 1971; 1972; 1975; 1979; Dzieduszycka-Mach-nikotm 1976;Balcer197171-132; 1975; 1976179-199; 1981310-317; Zimmermann 1982; Smolla 1987127-129). The use of these sources seems to run in parallel with the use of gold and copper ores, which were extracted in other types of mines already in the Early Neolithic. We may speak of two different industries, in which the extractors were well aware of the possibilities of finding raw-material deposits in Europe as early as Neolithic times. Specialists were surely needed in these types of enterprises {lichar-dus 1981265-270; Lech 1981.274$. The central European blades are found in all possible contexts. They are usually broken on the settlement sites, and they are usually whole, often in clusters, in hoards and graves, especially in the Copper Age. There are some graves in which the contents have been associated with flint extraction and/or knapping {lech 1981.272-278; Kmk 190.399-403)* Many graves of the Copper Age, Tisza-Polgar Culture in Slovakia and Hungary contain, as an important part of the grave goods, blades and cores of flint brought to the settings from the VoUiynian-Podolian mountains, about 400 km to the north-east as the crow flies. Some also contain raw nodules, weighing up to 3 kg, of the same type of flint (IMardm^Mm 1981279-283; BogndrKutzUn 1972; Šiška 1964. iJ^Flg. % In summary, a change of blade production and consumption is detected even in central Europe which relates to the spread and establishment of agricultural techniques from the South East and the following material changes. There seems to have been a shift in detection and utilisation of available raw material sources around the area during this time. There are two possible interpretations of the production and consumption patterns in central Europe. When people moved to another place, the settlements were carefully cleared of any knapping waste, or there were rules about who was permitted to produce the tools or blades and where they could be produced. In the second case, the tools or blades were mainly produced to maintain a ritualHtaytbical tradition of a group in the society, the group not necessarily being the producers. THE NORTHERN BLADES The situation in the northern-European contexts is different. Excellent, regular, blade production is indicated in the Villingebaek phase of the Kongemose culture of Scandinavia (ca. 6000-5000 BC cai) {foremen 1996; Vang Petersen 1993-14). The establishment of the Linear Pottery Culture in Poland happened in the period corresponding to the other half of the Villingebsek phase. The excessive production of blades indicated in the newly excavated settlement of Tagerup may be interpreted as production corresponding to new contacts and new needs expressed by these southern (continental) groups. This is a behaviour documented in many contact situations between hunter-gatherers and different, land-colonising groups. (For example, the painter Albert Namatjira in Alice Springs, Australia, and his family group, have delivered water-colour paintings in English " landscape style" in great numbers to galleries and collectors. A production of Kimberley points is also known in the prisoners' colony on Rottnest Island on the Australian west coast The points were sold to museum employees, among others) It is necessary, however, to mention that the production methods of the Kongemose blades are defined as endemic in southern Scandinavia. They were produced by locals, although responding to some needs expressed by groups living further south, who looked for new, exploitable resources. In the Ertebolle time (the end of the Mesolithic) the blade-production industry disappeared from the settlements, and regularly produced blades did not appear before the Early Neolithic TRB and the Middle 121 Helena Knutsson Neolithic Battle Axe and Pitted Ware Cultures. The lack of blades at Late Mesolithic settlements and the evaluation of the flint industry as generally crude are interesting phenomena which I shall address later. The blades are found in burial assemblages in both the latter contexts. They are also parts of the settlement assemblages, but there are some differences. In the Mesolithic graves, we find tools used in different ways (according to the results of use-wear analysis) as parts of the personal possessions of the deceased. This seems to be the case also in the graves of the Neolithic Pitted Ware Culture. The situation is complex; hitherto, the Pitted Ware Culture graves have been found in settings very distant from the nearest flint sources, and the number of blades, both in the related settlements and in the graves, is small. The settlements belonging to this tradition in flint-rich areas are full both of blades and of the waste from their production. The method of their pro duction is defined as "cylindrical". The cores have two platforms, and blades are extracted around these in order to make them as straight as possible. A number of the blades have been transformed into large arrowheads with tongues. The raw material is not the best sort of flint beach nodules have often been selected - and most of the cores have been used to exhaustion (Fig. 4). t O" O Grave 92, Tiszapolgar-Basatanya> Hungary Grave 14/55, Tibava, Slovakia Vel'M Raskovce, Slovakia, A - grave 1, B - grave 33 Fig. J, Some graves oftlte Tiszapolgar group, with finds of flint blades and nodules of VolhyniathPodolian flint rather small The Corded Ware Culture graves (the Boat Axe Culture in Sweden and Norway, the Battle-Axe Culture on the Danish islands and in northern FAirope, and the Single Grave Culture on Jutland) form another type of context, which contains blades. The same type of blade has been found in some graves, as well as in hoards around the flint-bearing areas, sometimes together with thick-butted, flint axes {Kar-sten 1994). Most of the Swedish Boat Axe Culture blades have been subjected to a technological and functional analysis. They were subsequently compared with samples from Mesolithic blade production and samples from the central-European, Corded Ware Culture blades. The Swedish Neolithic blades showed traces of detachment from conical cores of good-quality flint; the waste from the production could not be detected either in the graves, or in the contemporary settlements. After a thorough investigation, only three cores were detected among the stray-find collections in Sweden, their patina indicating depositions in bogs. The type of cores used for the detachment of blades found in the Corded Ware Culture graves is easy to recognise and distinguish from the cylindrical and even the Mesolithic blades. They are of a conical type, with bases slightly wider than the platform part. The platform is prepared for blade detachment by striking blows into the platform (and not, as in the Mesolithic methods of preparation, by blows from the platform towards the sides), the platform showing facets and ridges shaping angles suitable for the knapping of blades. The blades from these cores are also easily recogni- 122 Technology, mythology and the travels of the agricultural package in Europe G F A E UN F F F n n u F F irujtteii hinge IF oblique F blow F crwhed F / pnrp. crushed cortex blow 2 platforms Fig. 4. Ttie reduction strategy used in the production of Scandinavian Pitted-ware Culture blades. All the steps are represented in the settlement matenak. The reduction sequence could be as shown in the figure. Several types of cores were recognised in the production waste. sable: they have facets on the platform; they show traces of detachment with punches and are curved (Fig. 2; Callahan 1995.224ff). A microwear analysis of the available blades from Sweden showed two distinctly separate patterns. In the graves situated close to the flint sources, there was often more than one blade and they were either unused or had unrecognisable traces. In the parts remote from the flint areas, there was normally only one blade in a grave and most of them were heavily used for harvesting purposes (larsson 1988;lekbergetal mantis; Kmitsson 1995.150$Fig. J). In Denmark, a similar situation has been described {VangPetersen 199JJ6). A comparison with the material from a Corded Ware Culture burial ground in Vikletice in northern Bohemia showed a similar pattern of use and burial gifts in the graves {K Knutsson 1995. 22Iff; H. Kmitsson 1995108/). A summary of the production and the deposition of flint blades in Scandinavia is presented in Figure 6. Further studies showed that the Scandinavian (and the central-European) blades were probably produced in the same manner as the blades that came to Europe together with the "Agro-standard" or the agricultural package from the Near East INNOVATIONS, TRADITIONS AND MIEEA1C10ES There are, of course, several different reasons for the movement of tools and technologies. One of these is scarcity or an uneven distribution of resources. This type of tool and technique movement is well documented among different groups of mobile, egalitarian societies without agriculture. The preferential use of artefacts made from materials from distant sources is documented by McBryde and Lu-kin Watson from among other places, the hostile environments of the Simpson Desert in eastern Australia (Fig. 7). Grindstones, native tobacco (pituri), ochre, adzes and shells have been found hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the places where they were gathered or made. McBryde describes an intricate system of exchange networks, which, like the system of Xharo among the African Bushmen, had, apart from purely functional reasons, the important purpose of strengthening and building positive social relations between individuals and groups {McBtyde 1988; Lukin Watson 1980; Wiessner 1986). The movement of grindstones hundreds of kilometres from quarries is especially interesting, Their weight was considerable. We may compare it 123 Helena Knutsson Fig. 5. The distribution of blades from the Swedish Battle-axe Culture and the use-wear identified on them. AU tlie blades were found in graves. with the weight of the flint nodules which were brought to Hungary7 and Slovakia from the Volhynian flint areas during the Copper Age and then buried, together with dead members of the Hszapolgar and other communities (Fig. 3 and 7). I would suggest an alternative explanation of the traits visible in northern and central-European material from periods before the Neolithic. 1 would also like to relate the picture to the beginning of blade production in the Middle and Near Eastern traditions of the Natufian culture and its contemporary and preceding groups. "While the Australian (and probably also the European Palaeolithic and Mesolithic) objects were intended for practical use and the construction and reconstruction of social contracts, the European Neolithic objects ended up in graves often unused, being most probably designed to mark social possibilities and differences between individuals and groups. Another reason for the movement of tools and technologies was consequently a need to mark and enhance the status of the owner, dead or living, with the help of valuable objects made from materials from distant sources {Helms 1988; Smutting 199& Taffinder 1998). The production of symbolic objects which show the status of the bearer, the "customer" or sometimes even the producer, seems to be a normal way of thinking from the modern, western-European point of view. But, as I see it, a culture that promotes individual competitive behaviour is needed as a starting-point for this type of technology movement. When human societies develop a culture which measures the status of individuals, then the tools and objects, as well as the technologies as media for communication, start to be used in a competitive way to ensure a better position for the individual and liis family or clan. A complex relation to material culture develops; its "value" supported and enhanced by mythology, increases, which may justify also a "non-use" of tools specially produced for burial purposes only (Werner2000), Hayden (1998) offers an explanation of changes and differences in the use of technology in the social structuring of societies. He is of the opinion that technology is primarily to be seen as a practical phenomenon and that in all societies it is used in that way. But, very early on in human "evolutionary history", there begins a development towards the use of technology as an object of competition between individuals and groups of peoples. He concludes that 124 Technology, mythology and the travels of the agricultural package in Europe there is a development of prestige technology and the use of objects as competition items, driven by ambitious, aggressive and acquisitive individuals, aggrandisers, based on the opportunity for them to act, with the help of groups of supporters, in the interest of their own needs. In other words, these ag-grandisers operate on the basis of the decline of common, societal and cultural barriers to such individual interests. The material culture will be used in such societies to support the power positions of individuals or their classificatory or biological families, and not the need of co-operation between individuals and groups. If a need of cooperation arises in such a society, a network will be constructed, but still the need of the primary group will be maintained before the common needs or the needs of other groups in the network. If we try to interpret the archaeological findings from the Neolithisation period, we have to bear in mind that a shift from "collective" needs to more "individual*, prestigious needs may have taken place during this period. It is, however, important to see the cultural remains in the light of such a change. But it is also important to acknowledge the need of community support and networking for the development of specialist production and specialised extraction. What aspects of the archaeological material could be interpreted in this way? To begin with, there would be rather faint traces of such behaviour. If we look at the production of Neolithic blades in the Middle and Near East and later in central and western Europe, which is the concern of this article, we can follow some important changes. The systematic production of large blades concentrated in some production centres in the Middle East developed at this time. These blades were used for arrowheads and especially as harvesting tools and were widely exported and marketed around the region (see Fig. 1; Cauvin 2000.35ff 94f Fig 33 10% 145ff, 174ff; Ozdogan 2000; Behm-Bknke 1992 /76; Kodowski /994). The production of such blades spread to Europe as a part of the "agricultural package", but partly to areas where the production of blades was already established, for other purposes. However, with the help of technological analysis, we can follow the "original", south-eastern, blade-production mode as far as to the southern parts of Scandinavia. There the blades arrived with other "agricultural traits", for example, special burial customs with grave gifts symbolising control of nature and control of other groups of people (storage, harvesting, clearing of forests, killing of animals and men, i.e. war). Settlements Graves Bogs Mesolithic