Content:

The main goal of the paper is to present a new multidisciplinary project which focuses on the raw material sources of polished and ground stone artefacts in the Carpathian Basin and its surroundings during prehistoric times. In the last few decades archaeometrical methods have been improved a lot from the technological and analytical point of view and has thus become a primary basis of non-destructive lithic research. The main question for provenance studies of lithic artefacts is the identification of prehistoric raw materials, the location and characterisation of their geological sources. The geochemical fingerprints help to detect the connections between archaeological sites and the primary geological sources. We have a lot of information about some special, prestigious materials, which probably had a high value in prehistoric communities, and their distribution and circulation along several long-distance trade/exchange systems. Our goal is to integrate this ‘provenance data-set’ into an archaeological narrative, specifically relating to the ways in which the quantities of raw material extraction, circulation, production and use of objects is connected to changes in the social systems (social complexity, inequality). To study these questions, it is of crucial importance to understand the potential value of lithic artefacts, which can be approached by investigating the contextual allocation of the different procurement, production and deposition practices of the prehistoric communities. We will investigate the following questions:
1) Which rock types were preferred by the different prehistoric communities and why? 2) What were the distances of transport and the possible mechanism of mediation? 3) What are the estimated quantities of objects in different periods? 4) How do raw material varieties relate to the artefact types and what is their distribution pattern in space and time?

EAA2020: Abstract

Title & Content

authors