Session: #298

Regular session

The system and the organisation of acquiring and exploiting different raw materials represent the most important part of every economical system. Questions such as the availability of some of the raw materials, degree of their exploitation versus their availability, mode of exploitation, method of their extracting, connected with the technological choices, are particularly important for studying both economic and other social aspects. Analyses of raw materials may provide information on the human-environment relations; the relative distance of the sources from the settlement may point to the territories used or controlled by certain group, trade and exchange routes, etc. Technology of extracting materials such as stones or ores may indicate the level of technological knowledge. Furthermore, some materials can be considered as luxurious and prestigious among certain communities; this is often, but not exclusively related to the rarity or to the difficulties in obtaining a given raw material.
This session will focus on the lithic, osseous and perishable raw materials used by prehistoric communities of South-Eastern Europe from the Mesolithic to the Bronze Age. This is an interesting time period when communities became more sedentary, thus creating new relations with their environment, and the period when important changes in technology, but also subsistence and economy occurred, which in turn created the need for new activities, new everyday tools and changes in raw material choices, acquisition and management.
Potential themes include, but are not restricted to:
- exploitation of local and distant sources of flints and other lithic materials;
- trade and exchange of exotic raw materials (obsidian, marine molluscs, etc.);
- raw material choices and management of osseous raw materials;
- use of perishable raw materials (wood, plant fibres, etc.).
We would like to invite case studies, synthetic papers, as well as papers discussing theoretical and methodological problems.

raw materials, technology, South-Eastern Europe, Neolithic, Eneolithic, Bronze Age

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PaM

Selena Vitezovic (Serbia) ¹

Christoforos Arampatzis (Greece) ^2,3
Dragana Rajkovic (Croatia) ⁴