Experiments with Past Materialities 9781407308791, 9781407338644

Citation preview

BAR S2302 2011

Experiments with Past Materialities

GHEORGHIU & CHILDREN (Eds)

Edited by

Dragos Gheorghiu George Children

EXPERIMENTS WITH PAST MATERIALITIES

B A R

BAR International Series 2302 2011

Experiments with Past Materialities Edited by

Dragos Gheorghiu George Children

BAR International Series 2302 2011

ISBN 9781407308791 paperback ISBN 9781407338644 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407308791 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

“I think it is safe to predict that archaeologists will soon come to employ such experimental methods much more than they have in the past (…)” Binford 1988: 24

CONTENTS Dragoş Gheorghiu and George Children Introduction: The Position of Experimental Archaeology in the Archaeological Paradigm of the 21st Century ......................................................................................................................................................... v Biancamaria Aranguren and Anna Revedin The experimentation of technologies linked to vegetable food: the production of flour at Bilancino (Florence Italy) 30.000 BP ........................................................................................................................... 1 Jacqui Wood Daily practices of prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition ........................................ 9 Cinzia Loi and Vittorio Brizzi New experimental approaches on lithic projectile macro-wear analysis: A case study .............................. 19 Rocco Purri and Simona Scarcella Experiments and technological analyses on Neolithic ceramics from Lamezia plain, Calabria ................. 29 Marta Caroscio Storage vessels in the Mediterranean area in the late Middle Ages: Interpreting technical devices with reference to ethnographic and historical sources ........................................................................................ 41 Marie-Yvane Daire, Catherine Bizien-Jaglin and Anna Baudry An archaeology of the Iron Age coastal salt industry: The essential role of experiment............................ 47 Stanislav Grigoriev Experiments with Ancient Copper Smelting Technologies ....................................................................... 55. Mick Krupa Shropshire Council Experimental Archaeology in Charcoal Burning and Iron Smelting .......................... 65 Bernice R. Jones The Minoan Double-V-Necked Dress ........................................................................................................ 75 Heather Hopkins Using Experimental Archaeology to answer the unanswerable: A case study using Roman Dyeing ........ 81 Styliani Kaltsogianni Traces of fire and pieces of clay: A preliminary approach to landscape through the remains of Neolithic burnt houses ................................................................................................................................................ 93 Emília Pásztor Harmony of the material and the immaterial in prehistoric monuments. Experimental investigation of ancient light and shadow interaction: A case study .................................................................................... 99 Dragoş Gheorghiu Experimenting technological rituals ......................................................................................................... 107 M. G. Melis, R. Cappai, L. Doro, L. Manca and S. Piras Between research and tourism: A case of integrated experimental archaeology in Sardinia.................... 117 Francesca Oliveri The role of experiment as an educational approach in maritime archaeology ......................................... 133

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Biancamaria Aranguren Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana, Via della Pergola, 65 – 50121, Florence, Italy Anna Baudry INRAP, UMR 6566 « CReAAH », Base Archéologique de Poitiers, 122 rue de la Bugellerie, 86000 Poitiers, France Catherine Bizien-Jaglin Ce.R.A.A. 'Centre de Régional d’Archéologie d’Alet', Saint-Malo (France), coll. UMR 6566 'CReAAH', France Vittorio Brizzi Dipartimento di Biologia ed Evoluzione, Università di Ferrara, Corso Ercole I d'Este, 32, Ferrara, Italy Ramona Cappai Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e dell’Antichità – University of Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia Marta Caroscio "Fellow in Museum Studies, Museo Nacional de Cerámica "González Martí"", Poeta Querol 2, Valencia 46003, Spain Marie-Yvane Daire UMR 6566 'CReAAH' 'Centre de Recherche en Archéologie, Archéosciences, Histoire', Rennes, France Luca Doro Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e dell’Antichità – University of Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia Dragoş Gheorghiu National University of Arts, Research Department, 19 Budisteanu, Bucharest, Romania Stanislav Grigoriev Institute of History and Archaeology, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Kommuny 68, Chelyabinsk, 454091, Russia Heather Hopkins Thames Valley Archaeological Services, 47-49 DeBeauvoir Road, Reading, Berkshire, RG1 5NR, UK Bernice R. Jones 6730 West Country Club Lane Sarasota, Florida U.S.A Styliani Kaltsogianni Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Philosophy – School of History & Archaeology – Department of Archaeology, Panepistemioúpoli, GR-54006, Thessaloníki, Greece Mick Krupa Shropshire Council, Development Services, Shirehall, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury Shropshire, SY2 6ND, UK Cinzia Loi Dipartimento di Storia, Università di Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia Laura Manca Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e dell’Antichità – University of Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia Maria Grazia Melis Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e dell’Antichità – University of Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia Francesca Oliveri Soprintendenza del Mare – Palermo, Via Lungarini, 990133, Sicily, Italy Emília Pásztor Dunafoldvar, Sohaz. 4. H-7020. Hungary Stefania Piras Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e dell’Antichità – University of Sassari, Piazza Università 21, 07100 Sassari, Sardinia

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Rocco Purri Associazione Archeologica Lametina, Via Garibaldi, Lamezia Terme, Italy Anna Revedin Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria, Via Sant'Egidio, 2150122, Florence, Italy Simona Scarcella CNRS, UMR 5608 Traces, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France Jacqui Wood Saveock Water Archaeology, Saveock Mill, Greenbottom, Truro, Cornwall TR4 8QQ, UK.

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Introduction: The Position of Experimental Archaeology in the Archaeological Paradigm of the 21st Century Dragos Gheorghiu and George Children

restricted to the utilitarian function of ancient things (see also Preston 2000: 29).

Experimental Archaeology (EA) is a northern European creation (see Binford 1988: 24) that emerged during the latter part of the 19th century (for an extended bibliography, see Forrest 2008) but only developed as a sub-discipline of archaeology (Mathieu 2002: 1) towards the end of the 20th century (Coles 1973; Reynolds 1977; Reynolds 1978; Reynolds 1988; Reynolds 1999a; Bell et al. 1997; Harding 1999; Frère-Sautot 2003; Andrews and Doonan 2005; FrèreSautot 2006a).

Coles (1973: 168) underlined the ‘material’ limits of EA as being ‘an alignment to and familiarity with material culture of all kinds’.

Materialities

It often encounters a mixed reception in mainstream academia, as different people mean different things when they use the term ‘EA’. The majority of definitions (Coles 1967; Reynolds 1999a; Callahan 1999; Mathieu 2002; Cunningham et al 2008) insist on the separation of the scientific experiment from other forms of experiment relating to the past, such as the constructs, simulations or reenactments that occur in open-air museums.

In a classification based on materiality, experiments can be divided into ‘material’, carried out in laboratories or in a natural context, and ‘immaterial’, or virtual, as, for example, those which reconstruct the spatial experience of ancient architecture (Vranich 2002; Gifford and Acuto 2002; Brush 2004; Pasztor, this volume) or of industrial production in the past (see Hopkins, this volume). According to Miller (2006:3), an attempt to theorise materiality would divide first into ‘a vulgar theory of mere things as artifacts, [and] second [into] a theory that claims to entirely transcend the dualism of subjects and objects’. Today, EA objective studies tend to focus on technologies, i.e. on the materialities of the past, with only a few being dedicated to the recovery of the human presence (see Tringham 1978; Bouissac 2005; Gheorghiu 2005a); as for the ideofunctions of objects (Schiffer 1992), they are still allotted to the area of subjective approaches.

More than a decade ago, in what is today regarded as a classic text, Reynolds (1999a: 157) was very unequivocal in separating ‘experimental’ from ‘experiential’. But being constrained by the strict rules of the scientific approach, there is the risk that EA will lock the sense of the past. A solution to this would involve complex interdisciplinary approaches (see Hopkins, this volume) or the exploitation of middle range theories (Johnson 2010: 50ff), such as ‘the use of history as a form of experimental control’ (Binford 1988: 25), which create analogies for archaeological interpretation, to cite the ethnoarchaeological method (Longacre 1992; David and Kramer 2001: 150).

Experientiality

A complementary solution would to reconsider the subjective experience of the researcher and recent voices have been heard in support of the importance of personal experience (Petersson 2010: 61) and experientiality (Jeffrey online; Skeates 2008; Gheorghiu 2009a; Gheorghiu 2009b).

It is expected that cognitive, phenomenological (see, for example, Csordas 1999) and interdisciplinary studies will drive EA to new, more sensitive approaches (see Bell 2009) to understanding past humankind. In this respect, one can infer that the increasing number of experientiality studies in archaeology centred on the human body (Graves-Brown 2000: 3; Hamilakis et al 2001; Hamilakis et al online; Fuchs online) will begin to influence EA approaches (see Gheorghiu 2009c, 2009b; in press).

Since the advent of post-processualism, the area of experimental studies has gradually extended to cover the impact of human activity on the environment or to phenomenology and experientiality, but EA is still captive within limited understandings of past cultures, being

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Experiments with Past Materialities

Although discredited in the academic milieu (Reynolds 1999a; Osipowics 2006), in popular science, experientiality flourished in archaeoparks or open-air museums, where the educative message (Stone and Planel 1999; Frère-Sautot 2006b; Wood 2010) and the theatricality of re-enactment were well received by a large public. In the 21st century, experimentation in respect of the past has become an important part of contemporary life, which cannot be ignored, and new methods are therefore needed to combine experimentation with experientiality.

community’s young people to turn prehistoric ceramicmaking into a contemporary craft (Fig. 2), recovering the technology of making pots after a hiatus of centuries and thereby strengthening both the economy and local identity (Gheorghiu 2001, 2003, 2005b) (Fig. 3).

Education Beside the creation of diverse contexts of experimentation for professionals, which are used also for local tourism development and for enhancing local or cultural identity (Stone and Planel 1999; Melis et al., this volume; Oliveri, this volume), EA possesses an educative quality (Stone and Planel 1999), i.e., to teach the young generation to preserve the past. We will support this idea with two less well-known examples from the two geographical extremes of Europe: Portugal and Romania.

Fig. 2: Vases modelled by a villager in Vadastra village, after learning prehistoric technologies from experimental archaeologists.

The first example is the Andakatu Project of the Museum of Prehistoric Art of Mação (Portugal), coordinated by the experimentalist Pedro Cura. M. Cura’s main role is to collaborate with professional and student archaeologists to solve, in the laboratory or in real contexts, the problems raised by prehistoric tools; however, additionally, he is responsible for educating the region’s young people to understand its past and, in this respect, his work involves a sustained programme of social and didactic activity (Oosterbeek et al. 2007; Cura et al. 2008), which has been well-received and supported by the local community (Fig. 1).

Fig. 3: Prehistoric ceramic patterns drawn on the façade of the “house of culture” during the campaigns of experimental archaeology (Vadastra village, Romania, 2000-2007)

Eco-design An additional positive aspect of EA is the possibility of understanding ancient eco-design and, in this way, helping the contemporary scholar to rediscover some of the ecological technologies of the past that have an application in the contemporary world. To cite the example of Vadastra again, archaeological experiments relating to the construction of Neolithic wattle-and-daub houses were re-used as didactic material in the institutes of architecture to familiarise students with their ecological design (see Creanga et al. 2010).

Fig. 1: Pedro Cura performing in front of the young audience (Maçao, Portugal).

The second example is the archaeopark in Vadastra village, southern Romania, where experiments carried in the last decade (see http://www.pcrg.org.uk/Articles/vadastra_page. htm) (accessed 27.02.2011) have become a model for the

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Introduction

The book presentation: materiality of past cultures

Experimenting

The present volume, which began as an EAA session2, is intended to demonstrate that EA is no longer a minor subdiscipline, restricted to a particular geographical area, but a scientific mode to approach the complex material culture of the past and a contemporary discipline in numerous European archaeological schools. It is structured into two main parts according to the following themes, in chronological order, 1) experimenting ancient life (foodmaking, technologies, behaviours and daily rituality) and 2) the social implications of EA in education and popular culture.

the

The present volume represents a growing interest in EA across much of Europe, which has manifested itself in the creation of the European Association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment - EXAR (see www.exar.org) (accessed 27.02.2011), in recent multiple sessions, such as the 2006 UCL meeting or the 2007 meeting in Exeter (see Cunningham et al. 2008), the rise of specialised literature1, of specialised sites (to cite only http://www.publicarchaeology.eu/), of festivals acting as vehicles for research (Wood, this volume), or the emergence of new centres of experimentation (Pellilo 2009; Comis 2010) in Central and Eastern Europe, which host various constructs (Reynolds 1999b: 128) of architectural structures (Figs. 4 and 5).

In some cases, experiments were supported by ethnographic observations, used as middle range approaches, which sensitised experimentalists to the materials. All the studies illustrate, beside the plain relationship of agency with instruments and spaces, a relationship with different materialities relating to the diverse contexts of the past. This kind of basic human experience is subsequent to any scientific experiment and opens a genuine window onto the past, since, for contemporary people, the experientiality of traditional materials is a real archaeological experience. Finally, every experiment tends to be, besides a method to identify objects, spaces, or simple gestures, an occasion to create an intimate relationship with the materiality of the past.

Part 1 - EXPERIMENTING ANCIENT DAILY LIFE 1.1 FOOD - PROCESSING TECHNOLOGY

Fig. 4: Reconstructed wood houses (Biskupin, Poland)

Biancamaria Aranguren and Anna Revedin The experimentation of technologies linked to vegetable food: the production of flour at Bilancino (Florence Italy) 30.000 BP A set of ethnographic comparisons concerning the processing of bulrush, combined with wear-analysis of instruments produced by experiments, allowed Biancamaria Aranguren and Anna Revedin to infer that the Noailles burins from the Gravettian site of Bilancino, dated c. 30ky, were used to separate vegetal fibres. A similar approach, entailing ethoarchaeological observation combined with scientific analysis of excavation data (i.e., use-wear on the surface of Palaeolithic tools) and the results of experimentation, was used to validate the initial hypotheses. It was also employed in respect of other artefacts from the site, including pestle-grinders and grindstones, leading to a surprising hypothesis concerning Upper Palaeolithic food production.

Fig. 5: Reconstructed elements of a Chalcolithic settlement in Vadastra, 2004.

2

Session title: Experimenting the past. The position of experimental archaeology in the archaeological paradigm of the 21st century, Organisers: Dragos Gheorghiu, National University, Bucharest, Romania, Julia Wiecken, University of Exeter, UK, Emmanuela Zimmermann, Department of Prehistory at the University of Zurich, Switzerland

1

To cite only the nine volumes of the European Association for the advancement of archaeology by experiment: Experimentelle Archäologie in Europa, Sonderband I, 2006; Euro REA Journal of (re) construction and experiment in archaeology, or the special issue of World Archaeology, March 2008.

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Experiments with Past Materialities

Loi and Brizzi examine prehistoric obsidian arrowheads from the site of Santa Vittoria, in central Sardinia, from the perspective of ballistics studies carried out in the laboratory and in the field and propose hypotheses concerning the behaviour of prehistoric hunters, such as the battue (drivingambushing), which is characterised by shooting at close range.

Aranguren and Revedin offer a chaîne-opératoire of Typha rhizome processing, composed of a series of operations of grinding and pestling, inferring also some prehistoric cooking processes, such as the production of crackers and, subsequently, the gesture/operational sequence of the prehistoric technology of food preparation. As a conclusion, the flour production can be added, along with weaving, ceramics, and food preservation, to the recent evidence which supports the sophistication of the Upper Palaeolithic technologies.

The authors consider that, despite the multitude of variables involved, experimental studies carried out in the context of an actual hunt promise to expand considerably the range of interpretation using analogy,

Jacqui Wood Daily practices of prehistoric Mesolithic/Neolithic transition

Europe

during

1.3. CERAMIC TECHNOLOGY

the

Rocco Purri and Simona Scarcella

An example of the diversity of experiences with dissimilar materialities comprises Jacqui Wood’s chapter on the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition, which presents a set of prehistoric technologies, which were subject to experiment during the Festival of Archaeology in Biskupin, Poland.

Experiments and technological analyses on Neolithic ceramics from Lamezia plain, Calabria Purri and Scarcella propose a methodology based on experimentation for the analysis of the chaîne-opératoire of the Neolithic Impressed Ceramics and Stentinello traditions from the site of di Curinga, Calabria, using an approach which combines analysis of the archaeological material with experimentation of the entire process of ceramic production (from the identification of local sources of clay possessing characteristics corresponding to those of ceramic shards from excavations to the firing of clay objects). Several comparative archaeometric analyses of shards and the technological characterisation of the clays were followed by experimentation involving different methods of vase production to select the most appropriate process for creating the original Neolithic convex shapes. Close analysis of the shard surface enabled identification of the methods used to produce the decorative patterns and the form of the instruments employed. An important stage of the research involved experimenting with different types of combustion structure (i.e., kiln types) to identify the design best able to reproduce the temperatures identified during shard analysis.

The method employed consists of ethnographic and archaeological observations applied to different prehistoric contexts, such as the uses of grain and linen thread in semipermanent Mesolithic encampments. The chapter focuses on the subject of prehistoric food and beverage production in Mesolithic contexts, starting with a discussion on wild grains and the fermentation of beer, followed by a description of several experiments on foodprocessing, such as bread dough prepared using different combinations of meat, honey or fruits. Wood tackles a very important aspect of prehistoric technology, i.e., the Mesolithic production of string or fibre cordage to make fish nets or traps, demonstrating the unique craft of making nets from fine or thickly-spun linen thread. Another experiment involved the manufacture and use of a dug-out canoe and paddles for night fishing, using net traps or harpoons. All experiments on Mesolithic materialities cited were carried out over 10 days during the Festival period.

Marta Caroscio Storage vessels in the Mediterranean area in the late Middle Ages: Interpreting technical devices with reference to ethnographic and historical sources

1.2. LITHIC TECHNOLOGY

This chapter on storage vessels of the Mediterranean area from the late Middle Ages and early Modern period by Marta Caroscio is a particular case of EA, in which the ethnographic approach was used to demonstrate the continuity of a technical tradition.

Cinzia Loi and Vittorio Brizzi New experimental approaches on lithic projectile macrowear analysis: A case study Mechanical interactions produced in lithic arrowheads, such as traces of abrasion and fatigue, and different types of fracture, are discussed by Cinzia Loi and Vittorio Brizzi through a series of experiments in context.

The method consists in relating archaeological data to technological descriptions taken from 15th–16th century treatises and tax records and comparing these with ethnographic studies based on interviews and photographs examining the work of potters who were active until the 1970s. The continuation of a technical tradition over several centuries offered a rare opportunity to study the technology of the Renaissance and Middle Ages through contemporary

Because of the degree of indeterminacy of current testing procedures, the authors suggest some new and more efficient approaches to the analysis of lithic projectile mechanics, as well as the use of experimentation in the form of actual hunting scenarios.

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Introduction

technology discussed by Grigoriev refer to the preparation and melting of different ores.

ethnography. An initial result was the reconstruction of the chaînes-opératoires involved in the production of ceramic containers.

The experiments discussed demonstrate the high level of craftsmanship necessary to replicate the prehistoric technologies, as well as the diverse materialities involved.

1.4. SALT TECHNOLOGY Marie-Yvane Daire, Catherine Bizien-Jaglin and Anna Baudry

Mick Krupa

An archaeology of the Iron Age coastal salt industry: The essential role of experiment

Experimental Archaeology in charcoal burning and iron smelting

For Marie-Yvane Daire, Catherine Bizien-Jaglin and Anna Baudry, the experimental approach was an instrument to elucidate aspects of sea-salt production in France during the Iron Age, which neither fieldwork data nor laboratory analysis has the potential to address. Because of the limits of traditional archaeological investigation methods to analyse and to understand either the technology or the social role of the coastal salt industry during this period, the team carried out a set of experiments to address questions relating to the duration of the production process, fuel usage, kiln construction and the efficacy of the methods employed.

The paper describes a series of experiments on the production of charcoal and iron, carried out in England and Holland by a group of three experimentalists active in the historic environment sector and building diagnosis, Mick Krupa, Colin Richards, and Robert Demaus. Their connection with EA was due to the need to organise training in traditional craft skills, and testing of ancient materials and technologies at the 'living history museum' at Acton Scott Historic Working Farm in Shropshire. A recent project of the group was to demonstrate to the public the functioning of charcoal production in traditional societies using ethnographic data from last-century England or contemporary Transylvania, Romania, as well as technical data regarding tree species to be used, taken from historical sources from Antiquity or post-Medieval England.

The goal of the experiments was to study the process in terms of its technical feasibility and to understand the socioeconomic implications of proto-historic 'industrial' production, as well as to validate/invalidate certain hypotheses about salt technology and the ‘self-sufficient economy’ of coastal populations at this time. The experiments led to new questions concerning the technological and quantitative aspects of the pyro-operations, cycles of firing, ergonomics, taphonomy and the environmental impact of these proto-industrial activities.

A major problem faced by the experimentalists was to find the ore, and two cases are discussed in the paper. The construction of an initial bloomery shaft furnace with slag tapping facilities was carried out after documented historical models. Repeated experiments led to a successful result during the 7th Iron Smelting Symposium at the Archaeon Museum, Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands in 2010.

1.5. METAL TECHNOLOGY

The experimentalists conclude with the educational value of experiments in open museums, and believe that “[t]he fundamental benefit from all our involvement in experimental archaeology has been to share our experiences with members of the public, as visitors […] or as viewers of the television programmes”.

Stanislav Grigoriev Experiments with ancient copper smelting technologies. Stanislav Grigoriev analyses the complex chaînesopératoires of the fabrication of cast copper objects, which include diverse series of materials and operations. In these complex instances EA has an auxiliary role, the main one being carried by the analytical methods. Finally, the results of experiments will be compared with the analysed archaeological materials.

1.6. TEXTILE TECHNOLOGY Bernice R. Jones The Minoan double-V-necked dress

An experiment of melting the copper ore to be cast begins with preparation of the fuel (i.e. charcoal), a labour-intensive operation, carried out in dug-out pits with birch and pine charcoal. A second operation is the making of the auxiliary ceramic objects, like crucibles and tuyères, modelled from clay mixed with quartz, to resist at high temperatures. Repeated experiments demonstrate that the efficiency of furnaces depends on the efficient use of an air-draught, an efficient manipulation of crucibles and their protection from the negatives effects of the slag.

Reconstructing the form of antique costumes is sometimes a very difficult task and necessitates complex approaches, since these garments were made of perishable materials that leave no visible trace in the archaeological record. An example is the Aegean Bronze Age area, where textiles were not discovered in excavations and had to be reconstructed using only iconography. To approach ancient costume design within this geographical area, a comparison with contemporary technologies in fashion in Egypt proved useful. To reconstruct a unique garment represented on a Middle Minoan clay figurine, Bernice R. Jones therefore offers an approach that employs archaeological comparisons

Another important stage is the preparation of ore and the determination of the correct quantities. Other aspects of the

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Experiments with Past Materialities

Due to the multitude of variables involved in experimentation on the intentional combustion of wattle-anddaub structures, the result is a model analogous to reality, which can generate archaeological hypotheses regarding architectural features, the behaviour of materials and the social behaviour of prehistoric societies.

between Cretan and Egyptian costumes, together with a reconstruction of the template of an Egyptian costume. The problem of making the costume was approached experimentally, by deconstructing and reconstructing its design. Heather Hopkins Using Experimental Archaeology to answer unanswerable: A case study using Roman Dyeing

Emília Pásztor

the

Harmony of the material and the immaterial in prehistoric monuments. Experimental investigation of ancient light and shadow interaction: A case study

Heather Hopkins’ chapter represents a holistic approach to the Roman textile industry using complementary disciplines to investigate the manufacturing capabilities of dyeing in Pompeii. A full-scale replica of the dyeing apparatus was reconstructed in order to understand the capacity of the dyeing industry, the correct way of working, the dyeing cycles and the quantities of materials used.

Pasztor’s chapter concerns a non-material experiment using virtual reality to place prehistoric monuments in their terrestrial and celestial locations. The hypothesis to be verified was that the natural lighting of architectural features could have had symbolic meaning for participants in sacred ceremonies. If conventional experiments require physical contact with materiality, virtual reality allows one to experience the immaterial, in this case, built space at different moments of the day. CAD-generated imagery was employed to study the movements of the light on the surface or inside different architectural structures, the main object of interest being Stonehenge, where Pasztor believes light played a major symbolical role.

Health and safety considerations ruled out the use of original materials and these had to be replaced by thermo-conductive equivalents, which required the use of simulations using a virtual replica in a virtual environment. The simulations represented the form of the apparatus and its thermal load and were correlated with real experiments to speed up some of the processes. The virtual experiment allowed observations to be made of operational cycles in respect of sets of apparatus arranged serially and working in parallel (an extremely difficult situation to create in reality), as well as enabling the experimentalists to apply modern manufacturing systems theory to understanding ancient industrial production. Finally, the combination of disciplines and the combined use of the material and the virtual (i.e. the use of real experiments in conjunction with engineering principles) lead to a more profound understanding of the materiality, ergonomics and economic life of Pompeii.

The virtual reconstructions suggest that the monument would have served not only to observe the midsummer sunrise but also to amplify the interplay of light and shadow during the performance of ceremonies. 1.8. RITUAL TECHNOLOGIES Dragoş Gheorghiu Experimenting technological rituals For a half of a century, traditional archaeology, followed by EA, focused on the study of technologies to explain the production of objects and their utilisation; only rarely did it deal with the complexity of human action. Gheorghiu suggests that experiments could allow us to understand important aspects of the lives of ancient people, such as rituals. The structural analogies between the chaînesopératoires of some technologies and ritual activity are documented by means of case studies, where the experimentation of technologies is strictly determined by the laws of physics (i.e., the time of evaporation of the water contained in modelled clay or the attraction points on a Bézier curve). The concept of technical habitus is presented as the result of the embodiment of a technology with minimum energy expenditure, maximum efficiency and rhythmic execution, namely mastery, skill or savoir-faire, called by ancient Greeks τέχνη/technē. Understanding technology from a ritual perspective could help to strengthen its perception as a sophisticated holistic mind-body activity, which offers a new perspective on the technical acts of the past.

1.7. BEHAVIOUR AND ENVIRONMENT Styliani Kaltsogianni Traces of fire and pieces of clay: A preliminary approach to landscape through the remains of Neolithic burnt houses A difficult subject in the context of Balkan archaeology concerns the intentional destruction of the built environment, which, in this case, means the firing of wattle-and-daub houses. Styliani Kaltsogianni approaches the reconstruction of architectural features and collapse dynamics not as an ‘experiment in the strict sense of the word’ but as a model analogous to an experiment, to demonstrate how archaeologists use the material data to create different interpretations. Kaltsogianni discusses the importance of experimentation to create new archaeological hypotheses, especially when approaching past behaviour and activities. Starting from the study of a house excavated in the centre of Paliambela Kolindros, in Northern Greece, she analyses two experimental approaches to intentional firing carried out by American and Romanian experimentalists using replicas of prehistoric houses.

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Part 2 - THE SOCIAL IMPLICATION OF EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN PRESENT SOCIETY

Acknowledgements The editors thank the contributors for their enthusiastic participation, to Mr. Roeland Paardekooper and Mrs. Julia Heeb for the help during the organisation of the EAA session in Malta, to Mr. Pedro Cura for the kindness to share the material of his experiments, and M. Georg Petau, MA, for introducing the Shropshire team.

2.1 EXPERIMENT, SOCIETY, EDUCATION M. G. Melis, R. Cappai, L. Doro, L. Manca and S. Piras Between research and tourism: A case of integrated experimental archaeology in Sardinia A case study examining the social reception of EA in contemporary society, arising from the success of a collaborative venture involving the University of Sassari and a private agro-tourism business (‘Sa Ruda’, Cabras Oristano) in Sardinia, is presented by M. G. Melis, R. Cappai, L. Doro, L. Manca, and S. Piras. This example of public/private (i.e., institutional research/commercial tourism) co-operation promoted academic involvement in participatory tourism, with research providing an educational stimulus both for schools and the general public. A first stage was to build structures typical of the Neo-Eneolithic villages of Sardinia where daily activities were hosted relating to everyday prehistoric life. The experiments carried out were based on archaeological and ethnographic data and were designed to study the function of artefacts such as stone tools in context. Ethnographic data were used to inform food acquisition activities. The researchers also coordinated educational activities for schoolchildren, combining the experimental approach with experientiality. The educative value of this approach is clear, with its combination of multimedia presentations and direct experimentation of the materiality of the past.

Bibliography ANDREWS K. and DOONAN R. 2005 Ancestral Acts. Experiencing the Past Through Experimental Archaeology, Stroud: Tempus BELL, M. 2009 ‘Experimental archaeology: Changing science agendas and perceptual perspectives’. In M.J. Allen, N. Sharples and T. O’Connor (eds.), Land and people: Papers in memory of John J. Evans. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 31-45. BELL, M, FOWLER P. J. and HILLSON, S.W. (eds.) 1997 The Experimental earthwork project 1960-1992. York: Council for British Archaeology, Research Report 100. BINFORD, L. R. 1988 In pursuit of the Past. Decoding the archaeological record. New York: Thames & Hudson. BOUISSAC, P. 2005 The Archaeology of gestures: Reconstructing prehistoric technical and symbolic behaviour, A round table. Cork: 11th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, http://www.semioticon.com BRUSH, K. A. 2004 ‘Amarna: Computer reconstructions of an Egyptian palace’. In J.H. Jameson Jr. (ed.), The Reconstructed past. Reconstructions in the public interpretation of archaeology and history. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, pp. 249-60. CALLAHAN, E. 1999 ‘What is experimental archaeology?’. In D. Westcott (ed.), Primitive Archaeology. A Book of earth skills. Salt Lake City, Utah: Gibbs-Smith Publisher, pp. 4-6. COLES, J. 1973 Archaeology by experiment. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. COLES, J. 1967 ‘Archaeology by experiment’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. 49: 1-20. COMIS, L. 2010 ‘Experimental Archaeology: Methodology and new perspectives in Archaeological Open Air Museums’. Euro REA, pp. 9-12.

Francesca Oliveri The role of experiment as an educational approach in maritime archaeology In recent years, Sicily’s ‘Soprintendenza del Mare’ has launched a series of educational initiatives to create submerged archaeological parks in the region. To achieve this goal, EA was employed as a teaching instrument to familiarise young people with the work of archaeologists and with past cultures. Because archaeological objects are removed from the direct experience of the viewer, several school projects were proposed in order to help the young generation understand past ways of life. Oliveri describes some of these projects that ‘open’ the museum, and the past, to the direct experience of the young public, by means of simulated underwater excavations, access to cultural heritage for the visually impaired or partially sighted students, tactile itineraries with an educational role or archaeo-cuisine laboratories. These tactile experiences, which allow students direct access to the materiality of the past or enable them to recreate the flavours of Apicius’ kitchen, embody a form of non-verbal learning which has a powerful mnemonic influence on the individual.

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2005a The Controlled fragmentation of anthropomorphic figurines, Cucuteni, Piatra Neamţ pp. 137-144. In Dumitroaia, Gh., J. Chapman, O. Weller, C. Preoteasa, R. Munteanu, D. Nicola, D. Monah, Cucuteni 120 Years of research. Time to sum up. Piatra Neamt. 2005b ‘A Brief description of the Vadastra Project (2000-2002), Prehistoric archaeology and anthropological theory and education’. Reports of Prehistoric Research Projects 6-7, Salt Lake City and Karlovo, pp. 121-23. 2003 ‘Archaeology and community: News from the Vadastra project’. The Old Potter’s Almanak, vol. XI, British Museum, 2003, pp. 1-4. 2001 ‘Le projet Vadastra’. Préhistorie Européenne. Liège, pp. 16-17. GHEORGHIU, D. (ed.). (in press) Archaeology and experimenting spirituality. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholarly Publishing. GIFFORD, C. and ACUTO, F. 2002 ‘Space, place and Inka domination in Northwest Argentina’. In J. R. Mathieu (ed.), Experimental archaeology. Replicating past objects, behaviors, and processes, BAR International Series 1035, pp. 95-110. GRAVES-BROWN, P. M. 2000 Introduction, pp.1-9. In Graves-Brown, P.M. (ed.) Matter, materiality and Modernity, London and New York: Routledge. HAMILAKIS , Y. , PLUCIENNIK, M. and TARLOW, S. (eds.) 2001 Thinking through the body: archaeologies of corporeality. London: Kluwer Academic Press. HAMILAKIS, Y., PLUCIENNIK M., and TARLOW, S. 2001 Academic Performances, Artistic Presentations, Assemblage 6. http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/assemblag e/html/index.html HARDING, A. (ed.) 1999 Experiment and design. Archaeological studies in honour of John Coles. Oxford: Oxbow Books. JEFFREY, D. 2004 Experiential and experimental archaeology with examples in iron processing, IAMS 24, pp. 13-16. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/iams/jour_24/Iams2004.pdf JOHNSON, M. 2010 Archaeological theory. An introduction. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. LONGACRE, W. A. 1992 ‘The Perfect marriage: The essential joining of ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology’. In F. Audouze (ed.) Ethnoarchéologie: justification, problèmes, limites. Rencontres Internationales d’Archéologie et d’Histoire d’Antibes 12, Juan -les -Pins, Editions APDCA, pp. 15-25.

CREANGA, E., CIOTOIU, I., GHEORGHIU, D. and NASH, G. 2010 ‘Vernacular architecture as model for contemporary design. In S. Hernandez, C.A. Brebbia and W.P. De Wilde (eds.) Ecology and the Environment volume 128. Southampton: WIT Press, pp. 157-71. CSORDAS, T. 1999 ‘Embodiment and cultural phenomenology’. In G. Weiss and H. Haber (eds.), Perspectives on embodiment. New York: Routledge. CUNNINGHAM, P., HEEB, J., and PAARDEKOOPER, R. 2008 Experiencing archaeology by experiment, Oxford: Oxbow Books. CURA, S., CURA, P., OOSTERBEEK, L. 2008 ‘Projecto Andakatu: Didáctica da Pré-História através da Experimentação’. In Arqueologia Experimental-Recriações do passado em ritmos do nosso tempo, Actas das Sessões do Fórum Valorização e Promoção do Património Regional, vol 4. DAVID, N. and KRAMER, C. 2001 Ethnoarchaeology in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. FORREST, C. 2008 ‘The nature of scientific experimentation in archaeology: Experimental archaeology from the nineteenth to the mid of the twenty century’. In P. Cunningham, J. Heeb and R. Paardekooper (eds.), Experiencing archaeology by experiment. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 61-8. FRÈRE-SAUTOT, M-C. (ed.) 2006a Des trous... Stuctures en creux pré- et protohistoriques (Actes du Coll. de Dijon et Baume-les-Messieurs, 24-26 mars 2006). Dijon: Editions Monique Mergoil. 2003 Colloque et Experimention: Le Feu Domestique et Ses Structures au Neolithic aux Auges des Metaux, Collection Prehistories No. 9. Editions Monique Mergoil, France. FRÈRE-SAUTOT, M-C. 2006b ‘Sad news from Archeodrome’. EuroREA 3, p. 69. FUCHS, T. ‘The Memory of the Body’, http://www.klinikum.uniheidelberg.de/fileadmin/zpm/psychatrie/ppp2004/m anuskript/fuchs.pdf GHEORGHIU, D. 2009a Artchaeology. A sensorial approach to the past. Bucharest: UNArte. 2009b ‘Cultural landscapes in the Lower Danube area. Experimenting tell – settlements’. Documenta Praehistorica XXXV, pp. 167-78. 2009c ‘Experimenting with prehistoric spaces (Performance, experience, evocation)’. In G. Nash and D. Gheorghiu (eds), The Archaeology of People and Territoriality. Budapest: Archaeoligua, pp. 343-71.

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STONE, P. G., and PLANEL, P. G. 1999 The Constructed past. Experimental archaeology, education and the public. London: Routledge TRINGHAM, R. 1978 ‘Experimentation, ethnoarchaeology, and the leapfrogs in archaeological methodology’. In R.A. Gould (ed.) Explorations in ethnoarchaeology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 169-99. VRANICH, A. 2002 ‘Seeing what is not there: Reconstructing the monumental experience’. In J.R. Mathieu (ed.). Experimental archaeology. Replicating past objects, behaviors, and processes. BAR International Series 1035, pp. 83-94. WOOD, J. 2010 ‘Archaeological open air museums: A possible new way forward’. EuroREA 7, pp. 13-14.

MATHIEU, J. R. (ed.). 2002 Introduction: Experimental archaeology, pp. 1-11. In Mathieu, J.R., (ed.), Experimental archaeology. Replicating past objects, behaviors, and processes, BAR International Series 1035. MILLER, D. 2006 ‘Materiality: An introduction’. In Miller, D. (ed.) Materiality, Durham & London: Duke University Press, pp. 1-50. OOSTERBEEK, L., CURA, S., CURA, P. 2007 ‘Educação, criatividade e cidadania no Museu de Arte Pré-Histórica de Mação’. In Revista de Arqueologia, Sociedade de Arqueologia Brasileira, vol. 19, pp. 103-10. OSIPOWICZ, G. 2006 ‘Future of experimental archaeology’. Euro REA Journal of (Re)construction and experiment in archaeology 3: 3 PELLILO, A. (ed.) 2009 Guide to the archaeological Open Air Museums in Europe. Museo Civico Archeologico Etnologico di Modena. PETERSSON, B. 2010 ‘Meeting the needs of personal experience’. EuroREA 7: 61. PRESTON, B. 2000 ‘The Function of things. A philosophical perspective on material culture’. In P.M. GravesBrown (ed.) Matter, materiality and modern culture. London: Routledge, pp. 22-49. REYNOLDS, P. J. 1999a ‘The Nature of experiment in archaeology’. In A. Harding (ed.) Experiment and design. Archaeological studies in honour of John Coles. Oxford: Oxbow Books. 1999b ‘Buster Ancient Farm Hampshire, UK’. In P.G. Stone and P.G. Planel., The Constructed past. Experimental archaeology, education and the public. London: Routledge, pp 124-35 1988 ‘Arqueologia experimental: una perspectiva de future’. Eumo Editorial, pp. 85-135. 1978 ‘Archaeology by experiment – A research tool for tomorrow’. In T. Darvill, M. Parker-Pearson, R.W. Smith and R.M. Thomas (eds.) New approaches to our past. Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, pp. 139-55. 1977 ‘Experimental archaeology and the Buster Farm Project’. In J. Collis (ed.) The Iron Age in Britain – A Review. Sheffield: University of Sheffield, pp. 32-40. SCHIFFER, M. B. 1992 Technological perspectives on behavioral change. Tucson and London: University of Arizona Press. SKEATES, R. 2008 ‘Making sense of the Maltese Temple Period: An Archaeology of Sensory Experience and Perception’. Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 1(2): 207-38.

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The Experimentation of Technologies Linked to Vegetable Food: the Production of Flour at Bilancino (Florence, Italy) 30,000 BP Biancamaria Aranguren and Anna Revedin Abstract The open-air settlement of Bilancino (Mugello Valley, Florence, Italy) was a temporary seasonal camp, characterised by a lithic industry of Gravettian type and dating back to about 28,000 cal. BC. The interdisciplinary study of Bilancino has allowed us to propose a functional interpretation of the site as a seasonal camp dedicated to the exploitation of plant resources. On the living floor, not far from hearth A, we found two fragments of a sandstone pebble. These were used as a grindstone and pestle-grinder, respectively, as confirmed by use-wear analysis. The discovery on both grindstone and pestle-grinder of starch belonging to different plant species (e.g. Typha and Sparganium) constitutes the earliest evidence of a technique used in the preparation of flour based on wild plants. On the basis of these results, a search for ethnographic comparisons began with the aim of identifying possible food preparation techniques using the plants found at Bilancino, especially Typha. Furthermore, an experiment was carried out in order to verify the technique for using the grindstone and pestle-grinder. We were able to extract flour from the rhizomes: the flour was then mixed with water and baked over an experimental hearth to produce edible cakes.

Introduction Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria has approved financial support for a project entitled Vegetal resources in the Palaeolithic. The background to the project involves a number of studies currently being carried out by members of the project at the Bilancino Gravettian site, near Florence, which have led to the discovery of evidence of vegetable remains on lithic implements/artefacts (Noailles burins and grindstones). The project aims to apply new non-destructive techniques to the recovery and identification of vegetable remains from Palaeolithic sites; in particular, the project focuses on tools made from un-knapped stone likely to have been used in the treatment of plant substances, such as pestles, grinders, grindstones and hearth-stones, with the aim of acquiring new evidence on the importance of plant use in the Palaeolithic and of gaining a better understanding of the economy and diet of these most ancient humans.

Fig. 1: Location of the Bilancino settlement in Central Italy

The site represents an Upper Palaeolithic temporary seasonal camp, referable to the Gravettian and dating back to about 28,000 BC (Aranguren and Revedin 2008). The exceptional preservation of the palaeo-surface (extending over 120 square metres, with various areas of lithic working and a structured hearth), the accuracy of the documentation carried out during the excavation and the subsequent data-processing phase have resulted in the creation of a complex database, the progressive in-depth consultation of which is providing a continuing source of new information about life at the site and the activities carried out there. The spatial situation of all finds which had been uncovered during the excavations was registered by taking the geographical coordinates. These data were subsequently inserted in and processed using a GIS program (Cavulli 2008).

The Bilancino settlement The open-air settlement of Bilancino came to light in an alluvial terrace along the Sieve river, in the Mugello Valley, at the foothills of the Tosco-Emiliano Apennines, near Florence (Fig. 1).

The entire lithic complex comprises 43,920 artefacts. Among the tools, burins make up some 73 per cent of the 1

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was employed at the Bilancino site (Aranguren and Revedin 2001).

total and the majority of these are Noailles burins. The high typological standardisation of the lithic industry suggests the carrying out of a specific activity with highly specialised tools adapted to the precision processing of relatively soft materials. The operational and functional chain of the Noailles burins has been reconstructed based on production, use, reshaping, reuse, and so on, up to the point of discard (Aranguren et al. 2006).

The spatial distribution of findings throughout the palaeosurface was analysed by attempting to integrate different methods of intra-site spatial analysis to highlight both evident and latent structures with the aim of clarifying the spatial organisation and the activities that took place in different areas of the settlement.

Sedimentological and archaeobotanical data suggest that the Bilancino site was a summer camp located in a wetland or marsh supporting abundant hygrophile plants, particularly bulrush or cattail (Typha latifolia) (Fig. 5) (Aranguren et al. 2003). Ethnographic data from the wetlands of Bagnocavallo (Ravenna, Italy) indicates that bulrush would have been harvested during the summer months and processed with a tool – the arfinden – morphologically similar to the Noailles burin, used for the separation of the vegetable fibres from purposely dried bulrush leaves (Fig. 2) (Aranguren et al. 2004). Use-wear analysis and experimental reproduction of Noailles burins suggest these tools were used to separate the fibres of Typha leaves, like arfinden (Fig. 3).

Study of the vertical distribution of artefacts and of numerous refitting confirms that the Bilancino level of settling is related to a single phase of occupation. Analysis of the distribution of artefacts highlights the distinction between ‘full’ and ‘empty’ areas: higher density zones indicate discard areas created through the cleaning and maintenance of the areas where regular activities took place (Cavulli 2008). The conclusions reached are that the Bilancino settlement shows very accurate spatial organisation and maintenance, which testifies to a relatively prolonged period of occupation: it was a summer camp with a high technological level for the exploitation of vegetal resources.

The Bilancino flour The same analytical methods that had been adopted for the analysis of the chipped stone industry were applied to other artefacts found on the site, in particular, to pebbles bearing specific traces of wear. These can be considered as important indicators of technological innovation, as they are the outcome of specific technical procedures (De Beaune 2004). Since the morphology of such tools is generally modified by use, analyses aimed at detecting possible traces of this, as well as residues left by such use, may turn out to be of fundamental importance. On the living floor, not far from hearth A, we found two sandstone pebble fragments (Fig. 4). These were used as a grindstone and pestle-grinder, respectively, as confirmed by use-wear analysis (Aranguren et al. 2008).

Fig. 2: The processing of Typha leaves with an arfinden

Fig. 4: The pestle-grinder and the grindstone from Bilancino settlement

Fig. 3: The processing of Typha leaves with a Noailles burin

These two tools are strictly related by two different but synchronous technical actions: grinding and pestling.

In conclusion, to the various sources of indirect evidence is linked direct testing based on the recovery of organic residues of probable vegetal origin from the burins, allowing us to corroborate the hypothesis that a specific technology for the processing of vegetal raw materials

The discovery on both grindstone and pestle-grinder of starch belonging to different plant species (for example Typha and Sparganium) constitutes the earliest evidence 2

B. Aranguren and A. Revedin: The Experimentation of Technologies Linked to Vegetable Food

of a technique used in the preparation of flour based on wild plants (Aranguren et al. 2007). On the basis of these results, a search for ethnographic comparisons got under way aimed at identifying possible food-preparation techniques using the plants found at Bilancino, especially Typha. We found numerous comparisons in nonEuropean countries, from Australia to North America, where the rhizomes of these plants are still used today for the extraction of flour. Species belonging to the genus Typha are rhizomatous perennial plants typical of wetlands throughout much of the world, characterised by simple linear upright leaves (Fig. 5). It is commonly known that Typha sp. grows easily wherever the soil remains humid, at least during the vegetative period, and is able to colonise various habitats, such as marshes, lakes and rivers. The rhizomes, which can be kept for up to 22 months, are found between eight and 10 centimetres below the substrate surface (Figs. 6, 7).

Fig. 7: The collecting of Typha rhizomes

Fig. 8: The collecting of Typha rhizomes

Fig. 5: Cattail (Typha)

The experimentation On the basis of archaeological (grinder and pestle-grinder and structured hearth) and ethnographic (collection and preparation of rhizomes) data, we carried out experiments concerning different possible preparation phases, for nutritional means, of Typha rhizomes. A diary was kept during the research and is reproduced below, with the exception of photographs and film. On October 4th 2006, one kilogram of Typha rhizomes was collected at Travalle (Valmarina-Prato); to select the plants and wash the rhizomes in the river took three to four people, on their first attempt, around three-quarters of an hour (Figs. 6-8). Due to the lateness of the season, many rhizomes were quite dry and sinewy and so presumably had a low starch content. This meant more time had to be spent looking for the most ‘pulpy’ rhizomes (Figs. 9-10).

Fig. 6: Cattail (Typha)

It is important to highlight the other uses that make Typha, or cattail, such a multifunctional economic resource. Shoots, spikes and pollen are all used as a food resource, but particular use is made of the rhizomes for flour and an experiment was thus carried out in order to investigate the technique for producing this using the grindstone and pestle-grinder.

Subsequently, after removing the dead parts, filaments, and so on, the rhizomes were divided into two groups: the first was peeled by hand immediately and set out to dry in the sun during the hottest part of the day and also placed in an open oven at a temperature of 50 degrees centigrade for an hour a day, given that the sun is not particularly strong in October, and in four days the rhizomes were 3

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sufficiently dry. The second group was left to dry before the peeling process: this procedure was a little easier, but the drying process was much slower and after a week the rhizomes were not dry enough to be ground.

- Experimental grindstone: Weight: 1,340g, dimensions 16 × 11.5 × 5cm (this turned out to be slightly finer than the one in Bilancino and so rather less efficient); - Experimental pestle-grinder: Weight 600g, dimensions 10 × 9 × 4cm. On October 11th, the experimental production of Typha flour was carried out using: - the first group of rhizomes, already peeled and dried; - a wooden bowl; - the two pebbles found in the Arno. The grindstone was placed at an angle against the side of the bowl so that the product of the grinding action would be deposited inside; initially, we tried to grind the rhizomes, which looked like hard and fibrous cords, with a to-and-fro motion on a wider side of the pestle-grinder, with generally unsatisfactory results. We then realised that the rhizomes had to be pounded first, using the point of the pestle-grinder (Figs. 12-13); after the fibres were pounded and opened, the grinder was used on one of the wider surfaces (Fig. 14) and we noted that the starch was easily freed from the fibres, collecting in the bowl as a fine white-beige powder with a sweetish smell (Fig. 15).

Fig. 9: Dried rhizomes of cattail

Fig. 10: The peeling by hand of Typha rhizomes

Fig. 12: Experimental production of Typha flour

Fig. 11: The two pebbles collected near the Arno river

Two pieces of sandstone, morphologically similar to the grindstone and pestle-grinder of Bilancino, were then selected from the bed of the Arno River (Fig. 11):

Fig. 13: Using the pestle-grinder to pound the rhizomes

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B. Aranguren and A. Revedin: The Experimentation of Technologies Linked to Vegetable Food

approximately an hour, sufficient embers were generated (Fig. 19), in which we placed a chalky flat stone to heat up. In the meantime, we prepared dough with water and 40 grams of Typha flour (Fig. 20), which was stretched to form two discs of pastry of around 10 centimetres diameter and a few millimetres thickness, sprinkled with the dry Typha flour so that they would not stick to the heating stone (Fig. 21).

Fig. 14: Using the pestle-grinder to grind the rhizomes

Fig. 17: The structured hearth B from Bilancino site

Fig. 15: The starch is released from the fibres and collects in the bowl as a fine powder.

At the end of the process, which took a little less than an hour (counting the various attempts and the documentation), around 50 grams of flour were produced, together with a small pile of leftover fibres (Fig. 16).

Fig. 18: The experimental hearth: the fire was lit using pine and heather wood.

Fig. 16: Pile of leftover fibres of Typha rhizomes.

The second phase of experimentation was directed towards the reproduction of a hearth morphologically similar to hearth B (Fig. 17); stones of a similar size and material (Mugello sandstone) to the archaeological hearth were placed in a circle of the same diameter. A fire was lit using pine wood and heather (Fig. 18) and, after

Fig. 19: The experimental hearth: after more or less 1 hour there was enough ember.

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We also noted that the disposition of the stones, forming a very tight circle of 30 centimetres diameter and around 15 centimetres depth, helped the cooking process. The cakes tasted good and were quite similar to rye crackers.

Conclusion The study of wear traces, experimentation and the analysis of residues recovered from the surface of the grindstone and pestle-grinder offer definitive data on the use of these artefacts for the processing of Typha rhizomes during the Gravettian. Experimentation revealed the efficiency of the pestlegrinder when held in the hand (not leaning on the ground), which would explain the general absence of ‘support’ traces. In fact, the experimentation was conducted to reproduce a complex gesture/operational sequence, with methods consistent with those known of ancient technologies.

Fig. 20: A dough prepared with water and 40 gr of Typha flour.

The interdisciplinary study of the Bilancino complex carried out has allowed us to propose a functional interpretation of the site as being a seasonal camp dedicated to the exploitation of plant resources (Aranguren and Revedin 2001). This functional interpretation was confirmed by experiments. During the experimentation, we followed a procedural protocol, which included ethnoarchaeological observation, data registration and data evaluation, in order to check the primary hypothesis by comparison of the archaeological data with the experimental results. It was therefore possible to propose an interpretative hypothesis, thanks to the integration of the experimental results with the remaining data record from the research.

Fig. 21: The dough was stretched to form two discs of pastry of ca 10 cm diameter.

Not having found a flat, fine-grained piece of sandstone, like the one presumably in fireplace B, we used a flat chalky stone, which broke due to the heat, although we managed to cook one of the cakes in about 20 minutes. The second was cooked on a piece of sandstone with a coarser grain and this produced a perfect result because the stone was more heat-resistant. The heat absorbed by the stone was released over a longer period and the second cake, although slower to cook, was much better (Fig. 22).

The discovery in Bilancino of a technique for the production of vegetable flour during the Gravettian provides new evidence, relative to technological and cultural innovations, in addition to that already examined relating, for example, to weaving, pottery-making, food storage and increasing sedentarism. While all of these innovations characterise the early phases of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe, the production of vegetable flour anticipates by some 15,000 years the so-called ‘Neolithic Revolution’. The availability of a foodstuff with a high energy content, rich in complex carbohydrates and easy to transport and preserve, offered, in critical situations, greater independence from other food resources found within the territory and the possibility of moving over longer distances. The results obtained are encouraging the systematic search for micro-residues of vegetable origin on Palaeolithic sites: to achieve this aim, we propose a protocol relating to the sampling and analysis modalities of vegetal residue from excavation to laboratory. In particular, we focus attention on the necessity to systematically apply the experimental protocol to all of the tools on which vegetable micro-traces are found, with

Fig. 22: The cooking of one of the cakes made of Typha flour.

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the aim of locating the specific functionalities and modalities of the use of different artefacts.

Preistoria e Protostoria, Florence: Origines, pp. 183-29.

Bibliography ARANGUREN, B., BECATTINI, R., MARIOTTI LIPPI, M. and REVEDIN, A. 2007 ‘Grinding flour in Upper Palaeolithic Europe (25,000 years bp)’. Antiquity 8: 845-55 ARANGUREN, B., GIACHI, G., MARIOTTI LIPPI, M., MORI SECCI, M., REVEDIN, A. and RODOLFI, G. 2003 ‘Paleoecological data on the Gravettian settlement of Bilancino (Florence, Italy)’. In M. Patou-Mathis and H. Bocherens (eds), Le rôle de l’environnement dans les comportements des chasseurs-cueilleurs préhistoriques Actes du XVI Congrès UISPP. Liège, pp. 171-9. BAR International Series 1105. Oxford: BAR Publishing. ARANGUREN, B. M., LONGO, L., LUNARDI, A. and REVEDIN, A. 2008 ‘Bilancino, a specialized site for “latent technology”: an integrated approach’. In L. Longo and N. Skakun (eds.) Proceedings of the International Congress Prehistoric Technology 40 Years later: Functional studies and the Russian legacy. Oxford: BAR International Series 1783, pp 121-9 ARANGUREN, B., LONGO, L., PALLECCHI, P. and REVEDIN, A. 2006 ‘Éléments de la chaine opératoire-fonctionnelle des burins de Noailles de Bilancino (Florence, Italie). Actes de la Table Ronde’ Burins préhistoriques: formes, fonctionnements, fontions . Aix, 3-5/3/2003 Luxembourg: ArcheoLogiques 2, pp. 143-62 ARANGUREN, B. and REVEDIN, A. 2001 ‘Interprétation fonctionnelle d’un site gravettien à burins de Noailles’. L’Anthropologie 105: 533-45 ARANGUREN, B. and REVEDIN, A. (eds.) 2008 Un accampamento di 30.000 anni fa a Bilancino (Mugello, Firenze). Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria, Florence: Origines. ARANGUREN, B., REVEDIN, A. and BAGNARI, M. R. 2004 Interpretazione funzionale del sito di Bilancino (Firenze). 2° Convegno Nazionale di Etnoarcheologia, Mondaino 7-8 giugno 2001: 126-39. BEAUNE, S. A. de 2004 ‘The Invention of Technology: Prehistory and Cognition’, Current Anthropology 45(2): 13962. CAVULLI, F. 2008 ‘L’analisi della distribuzione spaziale’. In B. Aranguren and A. Revedin (eds.) Un accampamento di 30.000 anni fa a Bilancino (Mugello, Firenze). Istituto Italiano di

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Daily Practices of Prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition Jacqui Wood Abstract This paper presents the diversity of experiences with Mesolithic – Neolithic materialities during the Festival of Archaeology in Biskupin, Poland. A series of experiments in Mesolithic contexts are described, from prehistoric food and beverage production, up to the production of strings or fibre cordages for fishnets and traps. The making and use of a dug-out canoe demonstrates the complexity of the hunter-gatherers’ technologies and life.

Introduction Of all the transitional periods in European prehistory, the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition must have been the most revolutionary. To suddenly acquire the skills of farming and animal husbandry, as explained in countless school textbooks, is just too simplistic to contemplate. This paper will detail some of the results of various experiments conducted at Biskupin in Poland in September 2007 and over the last 15 years at my own experimental archaeology centre. (Fig. 1)

Fig. 2: Our Mesolithic camp

The concept of this research was to discover the possible utilisation of two new products in a Mesolithic environment, to imagine what a semi-permanent Mesolithic encampment might do with wheat grain and linen thread. I particularly did not want to introduce any new technologies for the purposes of this research, as I believe that ceramic production and ovens would have been developed gradually over the generations.

Grain

Fig. 1: Biskupin

There is evidence in the archaeology of the Near East that wild grains were being consumed prior to the development of hybridised wheat. When the water level in the Sea of Galilee dropped dramatically in 1989, an Upper Palaeolithic settlement, Ohalo II, was discovered. Dating revealed that the settlement had been occupied between 18,000 and 21,000 BP and, due to the

I have taken a team to the Archaeological Festival at Biskupin for more than 10 years, primarily to demonstrate Iron Age cooking techniques. In September 2007, however, I worked between the Mesolithic and Neolithic camps in order to carry out the research for this paper. (Fig. 2) 9

Experiments with Past Materialities

added to the trough and, after about 45 minutes of stirring, the liquid was strained into containers to continue to ferment for another three days, when it was ready to drink. During the Mesolithic, this liquid may have been fermented in leather bags, which could have been hung in the roof space of dwellings to keep them warm and to help fermentation. The fulachta fiadh troughs could have been supplemented in the Mesolithic by a small dugout canoe. There is no doubt that, as well as the pleasant alcoholic properties of beer, drinking it would have provided greater nutritional benefit than eating bread. When grain is sprouted to make malt, it releases all of the nutrients and plant sugars required to feed the new plant and would therefore have had more food value than bread.

waterlogged nature of the site, there was excellent preservation of finds. Thousands of carbonised seeds and fruits representing more than 30 species were identified, including numerous grains of wild barley and wild wheat (Nadel et al. 1994: 451). At another site nearby at Tell Abu Hureyra the remains of wild seeds and pounding tools, such as mortars, pestles and querns, were excavated (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989: 447-98). Also at a Natufian site, Nahel Oren, artefacts commonly known as ‘Natufian sickles’, which were made of flint and wood, were excavated. The usewear gloss on the flint is thought to be the residue of wild-grain stems, indicating that these artefacts were harvesting tools (Unger-Hamilton 1989: 88-103). (Fig. 3) This demonstrates that the collecting and processing of various wild grains was certainly not a new concept to hunter-gatherer societies; although wild grain lacks the carbohydrate content of hybridised wheat, this was not necessarily a bad thing for the hunter-gatherers, as, at early pre-pottery Neolithic sites, skeletons have been found to have higher levels of periodontal disease due to their new high-carbohydrate diets.

Bread Hybridised bread-wheat grain would have been very different fare compared to the coarse, starch-poor grain that people were used to adding to their diet. Bread wheat contains gluten, which makes dough that is sufficiently malleable to hold its shape when cooked. To make yeasted bread dough would also have been a relatively easy process: if one makes soft wet dough and leaves it to dry in the sun for a day, the wild yeasts in the air will be attracted to it; after subsequently leaving it in a warm place overnight, yeasted dough can be obtained. For my bread-making research at Biskupin, I did not want to use an oven to cook the bread, as I felt that the development of the clay oven would have been a very gradual process. For my experiments, I therefore sought evidence from European archaeology for prehistoric bread-making without the use of ovens and discovered some carbonised bread from the site of a pile dwelling settlement on the shores of Lake Ledro, in northern Italy, that indicated it had been cooked on hot stones. This particular bread was a small cup-shaped loaf or dumpling made from flour of coarsely ground cereals. As Tomasi observes: ‘…the ring-shaped form of those which were found whole suggests that they were wrapped around previously heated river pebbles; this custom of indirect cooking has also been noted in numerous ethnographic contexts’ (1982: 17). (Fig. 4)

Fig. 3: Author’s reconstruction of a Natufian Sickle

Beer before Bread? There is a school of thought among academics that grain was first used to make beer rather than bread. An obvious container in which to ferment beer would be made of ceramic, but the prime objective of this research was not to use anything that was not typically a Mesolithic technology, even though some Mesolithic sites in Europe had developed ceramic production (Radovanovic 1996: 280-2) Earlier in the year, it was brought to my notice that research had been conducted by Irish archaeologists Billy Quinn and Declan Moore, who had been making beer in fulachta fiadh, large crescent-shaped mounds of firecracked stones associated with long wooden troughs sunk into the water table. It has been generally thought that fulachta fiadh were used for cooking meat during long hunting trips over moorland. This new concept proposed by Quinn and Moore suggested that, while in some instances they were used to cook meat, they could also have been used to prepare beer mash prior to fermenting. Moore and Quinn in their experiments used a wooden trough capable of containing 350 litres of water, which was raised to the correct temperature for fermentation by adding hot stones. Ground malted barley and herbs were

Fig. 4: Ledro Bread

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Jacqui Wood: Daily Practices of Prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition

and embers with a forked stick and dropped the doughwrapped meat into the pit. (Fig. 6)

For our research, we mixed flour and water with a little salt to make a simple dough. This dough was rolled out on a flat stone with a debarked twig to a disc roughly 15 centimetres in diameter and five millimetres thick. We emulated the Ledro bread by heating some water-worn igneous stones in a fire, removing them with watersoaked wooden tongs and setting them in a row next to the fire. In order to gauge the heat of the stones, we threw a small handful of flour onto them periodically: if the flour ignited the stone was far too hot to cook the bread, if it turned instantly black it was also too hot. However, when the flour turned slowly to a golden brown colour the stone was ready for the dough to be placed on it. It took approximately six minutes to cook the dough and, with a twist of the hand, the bread came away from the stone and was ready to be filled with a variety of savoury or sweet fillings. (Fig. 5).

Fig. 6: Bread just placed in stone pit

We then proceeded to cover it with the stones from the other fire. During the four to five hours that the meat took to cook, the uppermost stones of the pit were used to cook fish, meat and fruit. So these acted as a hotplate throughout the day. When it was time to take the meat out of the pit, wooden tongs were still needed to handle them, as the lower stones were still too hot to touch. The upper bread casing of the meat was very burnt and hard. Great care had to be taken during removal of the meat to avoid breaking the lower bread crust. This was done by dislodging the bread crust slowly and quickly turning it upside down to remove it from the pit. The underside of the dough casing was soft, as the meat juices had permeated the dough while cooking. With a blade, we cut the base of the crust and pulled it away to reveal the cooked meat immersed in a pool of rich gravy, which would have been a very new concept to hunter-gatherer societies. The only vessels that they would have had to stew meat and produce gravy would have been leather bags and gravy made in leather is always slightly tainted and not quite as palatable as we found stone-pit gravy to be. (Fig. 7).

Fig. 5: Bread Cups

These ‘bread-cups’, as we shall call them, provide not only bread but also a container for carrying other foods and they could thus perhaps be viewed as the prehistoric equivalent of a wrap or sandwich. Experiments were carried out with a variety of possible fillings that might have been available to the prehistoric European. I have previously demonstrated making bread-cups for a television documentary and these were filled with fish that had been hot smoked over a fire with wild herbs. I also made a sweet filling of wild berries, nuts and honey. Bread could also have been utilised during the Mesolithic as a container for meat juices when used in a stone pit. Cooking food underground with hot stones is still a method employed in many parts of the world and is commonly practised by the Maori of New Zealand and Polynesia during celebrations (Buck 1974: 501). One does not need bread to cook meat in a stone pit, as layers of leaves placed between the stones and the meat not only prevent the meat from burning but give it flavour. However, if coated with salt and sealed it in a simple dough of flour and water, meat cooked in a stone pit can take on another dimension entirely. First, we prepared the pit by heating the igneous stones that lined it for an hour; at the same time, another fire was set next to it, heating more stones. We removed the fire

Fig. 7: Cutting away the base of the dough casing

We also attempted during our time at Biskupin to make some wild-fruit pies without the use of a clay oven. We 11

Experiments with Past Materialities

and it would thus probably have been an annual activity. Spring is the best time to strip bark, as the sap is rising and this lubricant makes it relatively easy to remove the bark from its trunk. If attempted in late summer or autumn, stripping can result in the bark breaking as it is pulled away from the trunk and only with great difficulty can long strips be obtained.

rolled out a simple dough 20 centimetres in diameter and filled it with previously cooked wild apples. The apples had been cooked by placing them, unpeeled, on top of the stones of the stone pit while the meat was cooking earlier in the day. Carefully turning them every so often ensured that they cooked perfectly, as did some wild plums that we cooked in the same way. We used a combination of crab apples and honey for our pie-making research. We laid a portion of the fruit onto the dough circles and topped them with a spoonful honey, sealing the dough with water. We then took a hot flat stone from the fire and tested its temperature with the flour method previously described. When sufficiently cool, the pie was placed on the stone for five minutes until cooked and was then turned. Once the top and bottom were cooked, we slowly turned the pie by hand on its side until it was cooked around the rim. The result was truly delicious. There would, of course, be no archaeological evidence for such an activity; however, the experiment did show that it was possible to make a pie in such a way without an oven.

Once the bark is collected, however, the outer skin needs to be removed by scraping and the inner bast thoroughly air-dried. Once dry, it is re-soaked for several days before the string-making process begins, the reason being that drying and re-soaking tightens the bast fibres resulting in a stronger string. Willow (Salix fragillis) is one of the most common trees or shrubs in northern Europe today and would have been greatly valued in prehistory, not just for cordage but for the pain-relieving properties of its bark. Aspirin was originally developed from a decoction of willow bark. Coppiced willow is clearly preferable to scrub willow, in that one can obtain longer initial bast pieces. Willow scrubland generally provides a good supply of naturally coppiced willow, which occurs when a tree has become too large and falls to the ground: the following season, the fallen trunk hosts myriad willow withies, which provide a perfect raw material for string-making. A long knife-cut down the withy will enable the bark to be peeled off the branch. As previously stated, the next process is to remove the outer bark, dry it and re-soak it, although it is possible to manufacture a reasonable, if not durable string from willow bark when it is peeled freshly from the tree in spring and early summer.

Once we had conducted our research into possible uses of wheat grain, we began making nets for our research into fishing activities. However, before giving a detailed account of this activity, it is important to look into the background of string-making from various plant sources in the Mesolithic.

Plant Sources for String in the Mesolithic The ability to make good string would have been one of the most important survival skills in prehistory. Without string, it would not be possible to secure branches easily in order to construct a simple shelter or to make animal traps or fishing nets. String would have been used to hang meat away from hunting dogs in temporary dwellings and to tie frames used for drying meat or fish.

The finest of all the tree barks in northern Europe is undoubtedly the bark of the small-leafed lime (Tilia cordata), the Latin name indicating the tree’s cordmaking properties. This bark, however, must be soaked prior to taking the outer bark off in order to make cordage. The rigid outer bark must be soaked for at least 14 days, preferably 21 days, before it can be processed. As the length of the sapling determines the length of string that can be made without the need to add on further pieces, the longer the sapling, the better the source of bark. Lakes and slow-flowing rivers would have been ideal places to soak the long bark fronds. The next part of the process is to cut away the hard outer bark to release the paper-thin layers of bast fibres beneath. These are then hung to be air-dried before they are ready to be processed into string or rope. I have worked with this particular fibre extensively over the years and was commissioned to make replicas of the grass cloak and shoes of ‘Ötzi’, the Iceman, for the South Tyrol Archaeological Museum in Bolzano, northern Italy. It was not only his shoestring that was made of lime bast, but also the cross-threads of the grass cloak and the blade scabbard.

It is believed that the oldest manufactured string was excavated at the site of Galilee Ohalo II, dating to 19,000 BP (Nadel et al. 1994: 451-7). It was because of the importance of the skill of making string in prehistory that I spent a year devoted solely to cordage- or string-making research in the mid 1990s. I started my research by experimenting with various tree barks. As a specialist in the prehistory of the northern hemisphere, I looked only at plants that would have grown at the time in northern Europe.

Bark or Bast Cordage Bast is the name for the inner bark of a tree or shrub and, in order to make a good string or rope with bast, processing is required. While bast fibres can be extracted freshly from certain trees, it is preferable for the durability of the cordage to process this material initially. The time of year that one undertakes bark-stripping is also crucial in order to make a sound product. After providing food and shelter, this activity would have been of primary importance to hunter-gatherer communities

Rope made from lime bast for a British television documentary in the 1990s was tested for strength in comparison to modern rope when lifting large stones for megalith construction. The lime bast rope was plaited to a thickness of 10 centimetres and was found to hold 40 tonnes of stone, outperforming the modern man-made 12

Jacqui Wood: Daily Practices of Prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition

shoes, cloaks and innumerable baskets, using all types of grasses, some of which were lined with clay and coated with beeswax to make very effective food storage containers that would have been useful during the prepottery period in northern Europe, although these began to deteriorate after about a year. My conclusion, in view of this, was that grass-basket-making was probably an annual activity carried out in spring to early summer in northern Europe. During the later Celtic period, the festival of Beltane on May 1st, otherwise called ‘The Fire Festival’, was held to cleanse animals by walking them through fires with bundles of the herb fleabane (Pulicaria dysenterica); as its Latin name denotes, this plant has disinfectant properties.

fibres and demonstrating why lime bast was the most used of all bast fibres.

Plant Fibre Cordage Nettle (Urtica dioica) fibre is one of the strongest plant fibres in northern Europe. The bark of the nettle can be stripped and twisted green to make a very strong durable twine for immediate use. Woodland nettles produce the best string as they tend to grow the tallest. A fibre for textile-making can also be made out of the bark of this plant, although this involves a lengthy process requiring soaking and boiling in wood ash and finally rubbing with clay on order to retrieve the soft, silk-like fibres for spinning.

It is highly likely that clay-lined grass baskets would also have been burnt at such spring cleansing festivals as far back as the Mesolithic. This activity would reduce infestation in dwellings by lice and food mites and can result in the production of basket-impressed and shaped ceramics, possibly hinting at one of the catalysts motivating the origin of ceramic production in the Neolithic. There are many prehistoric ceramics in northern Europe, such as at Corbridge in Northumberland (Manby 1995: 86), exhibiting basket-like patterns, which appear to replicate the kind of grass-impressed ceramics found among the ashes when basket-linings are burnt.

Woodland blackberry (Rubus fruticosus) stems are also a very useful source of string. They grow much longer in the woodland than in the full sun of the field, which is why woodland brambles are preferable. In spring, the bark of the bramble stem can be peeled away and the outer thorn-laden green bark can be easily removed with a stone. This inner bast fibre is almost translucent and, once dried and then soaked, makes a very durable string. Some plant basts can be gathered during the winter. The bark of the wild clematis (Clematis vitalba) can be easily harvested at that time of year, when the vine virtually sheds its own bark; however, when making rope or string with it, the fibres need to be kept wet at all times to make them malleable. The rootlets of trees that grow at the water’s edge can also be a useful source of string in the winter months, as these do not need to be processed unless the roots are thicker than two centimetres. The thicker roots need to be coiled and boiled in water in a wooden trough (in prehistory this would have been done by adding hot stones to the trough at regular intervals). Once boiled for an hour or so, the roots can be split prior to rope-making. The soft rush (Juncus) also makes an effective string, as it can grow to more than a metre in length in wet ground. This plant needs merely to be dried before being made into an effective string by plaiting. It can be made into a good rope in this state or the bark can be peeled and dried after peeling to make a finer string. Soft-rush string, however, is appropriate for short-term use only, as it will disintegrate after a matter of weeks and is not suitable for structural use. It does, on the other hand, make a very good twine for small basket- or grass-hat-making and in those circumstances will last for many years.

Fig. 8 Nettle fibre, lime bast and linen string away

To summarise, there were many diverse plant sources for string that would have been commonly in use in northern Europe during the Mesolithic, which raises the question of why the use of linen fibre would have been so revolutionary among hunter-gatherer communities. Flax grown in wetland produces tall thick stems of fibre that can be soaked and beaten and pulled through a device resembling a wooden comb to produce fine, long, extremely subtle fibres. This fibre is nothing like any other fibre mentioned previously, apart from nettle fibre used for textile production, which needs a protracted amount of processing. All of the cordage and string previously mentioned tends to be stiff, even if made into a fine string. Linen thread, however, can be spun to less than half a millimetre thick and is so strong that, even at that thickness, it will cut into one’s finger if one attempts

Sedge grasses (Cyperaceae) also make excellent string, although the serrated edge makes them impossible to work with without wearing gloves. However, with a very light touch, these can be made into a string that will hold a temporary structure quite firmly. Lastly, grasses of any kind can be made into a very good and durable string if plaited to a great enough thickness and I have undertaken many years’ research into the possible uses of grass in prehistory. These include hats, 13

Experiments with Past Materialities

because the net was not knotted and stretched to accommodate the size of the fish. I did, however, find that the knotless net, while ineffectual in terms of actually catching the fish, made a very good keep-net once the fish were caught if suspended around a wooden hoop just out of the water. Once the fish were put in the knotless keep-net, their weight tightened the twists and held them securely until needed.

to snap it. This soft, supple, incredibly strong fibre makes excellent fishing line and fishing nets. It could also be dyed with plant extracts to make an almost invisible, yet extremely strong string for use in animal traps. (Fig. 8) Our linen string research at Biskupin consisted of making fishing nets, fish-traps and trawl-nets to drag behind a dugout canoe on the lake. Fish-traps and nets have not changed significantly in design since the Mesolithic and there are many examples from archaeology.

Prehistoric Fish Traps The majority of fish-traps excavated at sites in Russia were made from pine splinters and willow twigs, such as the famous trap at Zamostje 2. The two fish-traps excavated there were made from long splinters of pine bound by bast string. The traps contained a considerable number of fish skeletons, indicating that their owners, for some reason, did not return to retrieve their catch (Lozovski 1999: 139-45). In Lithuania, a net-trap made of lime bast was excavated (Rimantene 1980: 74), which was made with willow hoops to keep the trap open in the river.

Fig. 9: Fish swimming amongst the piles of the Bronze Age dwellings

I would assume, in light of this research, that that this is possibly why the Friesack site had the two distinct types of net: one to catch the fish and one to hold them until they could be cooked.

A considerable amount of fishing net and cordage made of bast fibres was also excavated at the Mesolithic site of Friesack. The nets excavated on this particular site were made by using two distinct techniques, producing, respectively, the knotless and the knotted net. Net-making activity was based on the production of twisted yarn, large numbers of fragments of which were also found on the site (Gramsch 1992: 69). The distinction between the knotless and knotted nets is determined by the use of the nets. The knotless net, also known as ‘sprang’, and was used throughout Europe and the Middle East; at the drycave site of Nahal Hemar, near Galilee, a considerable amount of sprang or knotless net was excavated dating to 8,600 BP (Schick 1988: 31-6)

Dug out Canoe Fishing At the Ertebolle settlement of Tybrind Vig, on the west coast of Fyn, Denmark, there are indications that the inhabitants fished from dugout canoes in the shallow waters of the bay. Two small canoes were excavated that were not designed for deep water, which pointed to this assumption. The Tybrind 1 boat, however, was considerably larger, being almost 10 metres long, and was designed for deep-water navigation.

My own experiments have revealed that knotless netting could have many useful applications and it is still made in Asian countries, particularly for hammocks. The technique of twisting the fibres over a frame without knotting them makes the net able to stretch both lengthways and widthways. This technique has been found in Bronze Age textiles in Demark, most notably at Egtved, where it was manufactured into a hair net or bonnet (Broholm and Hald 1948: 27)

Before we could start our dugout canoe research at Biskupin, my team needed to become competent paddlers. For safety reasons, we could not attempt to do any fishing with the boat until they knew how to handle it in the middle of the lake. (Fig. 10)

While researching fishing techniques at the Pile Dwelling Museum at Lake Ledro, northern Italy, I made a knotless net and attempted to catch fish with it in the shallows of the lake. The area where I was fishing was next to the submerged supports of the Bronze Age pile dwellings. (Fig. 9). This area was protected from the local fishermen because of the archaeology and was therefore teeming with very large docile fish. However, all my attempts to catch them with the knotless net were unsuccessful because, when the net was stretched across an expanse of water in the shallows, the fish were able to push through it. This was

Fig. 10: My team becoming acquainted with their paddles

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Jacqui Wood: Daily Practices of Prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition

After a day, they were confident that they could handle the boat, so we went back to our camp and made some knotted fishing net replicating the finds from the Nahal Hemar cave (Schick 1988: 35). It did not require much skill to be very quick and competent at making large lengths of netting for shallow-water fishing. Once the knotting technique had been mastered, we made various types of trawl-nets and netting fish-traps. The trawl-nets were held apart by small branches. The open end of the trawl-net was one metre in diameter and the other end had a diameter of no more than 15 centimetres. A series of string-bound wooden loops spaced the trawl-net along its length, which was 1.5 metres. At the end of the net was a stone weight to keep it low in the water while trawling. The team proceeded to paddle into the centre of the lake with the trawl-net and drop it into the water. They then paddled as fast as possible across the lake; however, even with three people paddling, the drag of the net was so strong that this effort could not be maintained for more than 30 minutes at a time. After a number of attempts, some small fish were caught in the net but none big enough to merit cooking and these were released. We then began to make fish-traps and it took some time to attain the correct proportions. (Fig. 11)

characteristic of many Danish Stone Age boats and is probably connected with eel fishing - the calm shallow muddy bottomed bay must have been ideal for the use of eel flares in summer and autumn’ (Anderson, 1985: 5569). Were the fires in the dugouts really designed to lure fish to the surface of the water while night-fishing? Initially, a decision had to be made about what to use for torches. After some thought, it was decided that the simplest method of torch-making would be to split the end of a long pole and insert strips of birch bark into the slit, the premise being that, as the bark has a layer of tar beneath it, it would make a good bright torch. (Fig. 12)

Fig. 12: Birch bark torches

Also if the torch was going out, it could easily be replenished by adding more bark strips to the slit in the pole. So the team prepared the bark strips into bundles in readiness to test the assumption that evening. An English craftsman had made some bone harpoons typical of the period to take with us to Poland and all we had to do was to haft them onto a stick with linen thread and birch-bark tar. (Fig. 3) Fig. 11: Fish trap ready to be sited in the shallows

However, we eventually made enough to distribute them at various parts of the shallows of the lakes. We located the traps by placing long tree branches in the water next to them. Unfortunately, on the days we had the traps in the lake we did not catch any fish in them, but, as we lacked local fishing knowledge, we were probably placing them in the wrong locations. However, the fishing experiments did show how much easier it would have been to make nets, traps and line using linen thread rather than other plant sources of string and basts. Fig. 13: Bone Harpoon hafted with linen thread and birch bark tar

Boat Fire Research at Biskupin

Later in the afternoon, the end of the dugout was filled with damp sand and an oval hearth of igneous stones placed on top of it. Just before dark, some embers from a fire on the shore were placed into the boat hearth and we prepared to test the hypothesis. Once the fire was well lit in the boat and it was almost dark, the team paddled out into a small inlet at the edge of the lake. (Fig. 14)

During the course of the research into fishing at Biskupin, the opportunity arose to test Anderson’s (1985) theory on the reason for fires in the Tybrind boats. He observes that ‘an oval fireplace of sand and small stones was found half a metre inside the stern of the bottom of boat 1 and traces of a similar fireplace were found in boat 2. This feature is 15

Experiments with Past Materialities

a fish did not really matter; the fact that the fish were lured to the surface by the lights was the important result. Our experiment certainly confirmed the suggestion regarding the purpose of the fires in the Tybrind Vig boat. The spectacle of dozens of pieces of flaming birch bark on the surface of the water was quite extraordinary. I have found over the many years that I have been conducting such experiments, however, that the unexpected is invariably the norm. I assumed that the birch-bark strips would have made a good torch, but I did not expect them to drop in pieces onto the surface of the water and not have their flames extinguished. Fig. 14: Fire lit and ready to start fishing

Conclusion

The birch-bark torches were lit from the fire and one of the team held them out over both sides of the boat. Another member waited, with harpoon in hand, while the third tended the fire. A totally unexpected phenomenon occurred moments later. The strips of birch bark that were well alight started dropping off the pole into the water. (Fig. 15)

The lifestyle of the hunter-gatherer must, I believe, have been remembered with a sense of loss. For, delicious though the apple pies were and the gravy encased in dough from the stone pit, these people sacrificed a considerable amount of freedom to make such culinary luxuries possible. The growing of wheat and becoming sedentary would have been a very hard decision for hunter-gatherers to make. The term ‘the daily grind’ is synonymous with hard, boring and repetitive work today. Yet, that is just what life became once wheat grain was deemed an essential part of the diet of the people of prehistoric Europe. For the first time, people would have had to worry about the weather. Would their crops grow well if it was too dry and could it be harvested safely if it was wet and stormy? As hunter-gatherers they had just to follow the herds in order to acquire all their daily needs of clothing, shelter and food. Dental records show that the teeth of the first farmers in the Near East, due their highcarbohydrate diet, were subject to decay for the first time. In today’s society, there are now increasing problems with wheat intolerance and one wonders whether the metabolism of a few of us is reverting back to a Mesolithic state.

Fig. 15: Bark strips dropping into the water and luring fish to the surface

But instead of going out they produced many small floating lights on the surface of the water around the boat. Almost immediately, fish were being lured to the surface by the lights. (Fig. 16)

Fig. 16: Fish visible to the team around the boat

The advantage of making nets of fine- or thickly-spun linen thread would have been unparalleled during the Mesolithic. As previously stated, linen requires relatively little processing in order to make a fine string or a thick rope whenever it is needed. The eventual planting and harvesting in the wetlands of flax plants would possibly have become just as natural as the annual gathering of water reeds (Phragmites) in spring for roof repairs. The use of lime bast continued into the Bronze Age, as demonstrated by the lime-bast fibres used on the Iceman Ötzi’s equipment. Nettle fibre for textile production would have also continued, but as a higher-status fabric than linen and wool, due to its softness and lightness. The making of bast and other plant fibres, because of its labour-intensive processing and gathering, would probably have been superseded by linen thread for the most part.

The harpooner attempted to spear the clearly visible fish but unfortunately missed them every time, due largely to lack of skill and practice. However, our inability to spear

Still, the period of transition from hunting and gathering to the well-established mixed farming homesteads of the Neolithic would have been a very gradual process. I 16

Jacqui Wood: Daily Practices of Prehistoric Europe during the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition

1992 ‘Friesack Mesolithic Wetlands’. In Coles, B. (ed.) The Wetland Revolution in Prehistory. Exeter: WARP and Prehistoric Society. LOZOVSKI, V. 1999 ‘Archaeological and ethnographic data for fishing structures from north-eastern Europe to Siberia and Russia’. In B. Coles, J. Coles and M. S. Jorgensen (eds.) Bog Bodies, Sacred Sites and Wetland Archaeology. Proceedings of the 1996 WARP/National Museum of Denmark Conference. WARP Occasional Paper 12. MANBY, T. G. 1995 ‘Skeuomorphism: some reflections of leather, wood and basketry in Early Bronze Age pottery’. In I. Kinnes and G. Varndell (eds.) Unbaked Urns of Rudley Shape: Essays on British and Irish Pottery for Ian Longworth. Oxford: Oxbow Monographs in Archaeology 55. NADEL, D., DANIN, A., WERKER, E., SCHICK, T., KISLEV, M. E. and STEWART, T. K. 1994 ‘19,000-Year-Old Twisted Fibres from Ohalo II’. Current Anthropology 35(4): 451. RADOVANOVIC, I. 1996 The Iron Gates Mesolithic. Michigan: International Monographs in Prehistory Archaeological Series 11. RIMANTENE, R. K. 1980 Sventoji, Pamariu kuluros gyvenietes. Vilnius. SCHICK, T. 1988 Nahal Hemar Cave: Cordage, Basketry and Fabrics. Jerusalem: Antiqot, English Series Volume XVIII. TOMASI, J. J. 1982 The lake-dwellings of Lake Ledro. Trento: Societa di Scienze Naturali Del Trentino. UNGER-HAMILTON, R. 1989 ‘The Epi-Palaeolithic Southern Levant and the Origins of Cultivation’. Current Anthropology 30(1): 88-103.

believe that people would have adopted more and more new technologies while retaining a considerable number of old ones in daily use for some generations. This research has shown, I believe, that, equipped only with Mesolithic technologies, hunter-gatherers could still have taken advantage of new commodities that were traded with them. The more regular trading links became, the more sedentary nomadic communities would have become to take advantage of their exciting merchandise.

Archaeological Festivals as vehicles for research I have found that, over the 10 years that I have been demonstrating ancient cooking techniques at the Biskupin Archaeological Festival, it was boredom that very often led to invention and, subsequently, discovery. Too many such festivals are held for a period of only three or four days’ duration so that, by the time researchers have set up their exhibits and demonstrated them, it is time to pack up and return home. The distinction that sets the Biskupin festival apart is that it takes place over 10 days. The first three days are devoted to setting up and refining one’s workshop or exhibit and it is only after the fourth day, while sitting with an array of prehistoric cooking equipment (as I have, with huge amounts of meat and fish to cook) that I would become a little bored. That boredom very often inspired me to invent different things to do with the ingredients before me, just as those living in prehistory must have done. In my experience, it is the very boredom of such situations that inspires experimentation and invention. It is then, and only then, that one makes really new and valid discoveries. I suggest, therefore, that, in the interest of archaeological research, those planning such festivals run them for at least 10 days.

Bibliography ANDERSON, S. H. 1985 ‘Tybrind Vig: A preliminary report on a submerged Ertebolle Settlement on the west coast of Flyn’ Journal of Danish Archaeology 4: 55-69. BAR-YOSEF. O., and BELFER-COHEN, A. 1989 ‘The Origins of Sedentism and Farming Communities in the Levant’. Journal of World Prehistory 3(40): 447-498. BROHOLM, H. C., and HALD, M. 1948 Bronze Age Fashion. An Exhibition of Danish Art Treasures (trans. Jorgen Anderson). Copenhagen: Gyidendaiske Boghandel Nordisk Foriag. BUCK, P. 1974 The Coming of the Maori (2nd edn). Christchurch, New Zealand: Whitcoulls. GRAMSCH, B.

17

New Approaches to the Experimentation on the Impact of Lithic Projectiles Points Cinzia Loi and Vittorio Brizzi Abstract Traditional ballistic experiments, able to verify the macroscopic and microscopic results of impact on lithic projectile points for comparison with the archaeological record, have been carried out using carcasses or substitute targets placed at variable distances, from 10 to 20 metres. According to the authors, this practice has limitations. First, the effects of short-range impacts have not yet been taken into consideration. In this case, the effect of vibrational mechanics on impact generates transversal macro-fractures that are generally considered ‘incidental’ in the literature. Second, modifications occurring immediately after impact on a live target resulting from the wounded animal escaping, from transportation of the carcass by hunters and from removal of the projectile from the animal have not been considered. The adopted experimental protocols have never been completely accepted and some basic elements, such as criteria defining a firm bond between the projectile shaft and the armour, have never been agreed. A sample of archaeological remains found at the Neolithic site of Monte Santa Vittoria (Mount Santa Vittoria), in Neoneli, has allowed the authors to investigate how macroscopic diagnostic indexes on projectile points that are considered valid in the literature may be integrated with those resulting from the application of the protocols mentioned above.

must be defined and its membership of a use-category classified according to wear traces. Experimental work specifically devoted to impacts was developed mainly during the years after Semenov. Use-wear traces on projectile tips are basically of two kinds: traces of abrasion and of fatigue. Both are diagnostic of fracture mechanics of solid homogeneous structures under static or dynamic loading (Cotterell et al. 1985).

Introduction Experimental ballistics relating to the prehistoric period is carried out through the simulation of hunting, specifically the moment of impact between projectile and prey, so as to carry out comparative analyses with the archaeological record. Fracture patterns on lithic artefacts have long been the subject of experimental and theoretical studies. They have proved very useful in interpreting functional tools from an archaeological, technological and behavioural point of view, with reference to their production, use and abandonment (Ahler 1979, 1989, 1992; Callahan 1979; Dockall 1997).

The first (abrasion) refers to deformation of the surface of the object due to polishing, flattening or blistering but does not correspond to a change in the macroscopic physical shape of the artefact (Buckley 1981: 469-71). The second (fatigue) represents an actual break, visible to the naked eye, which occurs when the mechanical strength of the material that forms the artefact is overcome by the force of impact. These fractures are divided into longitudinal, lateral and distal transverse processes (snap fractures), crushing, step fractures and spin-off fractures.

Later, with the introduction of use-wear analysis, a significant frame of reference began to be defined. It allowed damage on tips and margins to be examined by comparison of the archaeological artefact and a specially replicated piece subjected to abrasion wear and fatigue. Developed in Russia, thanks to Semenov (1964), this technique has been applied to a vast collection of lithic material (Odell 1977; Keeley 1980; Vaughan 1985). Blind tests carried out subsequently have provided excellent results (Keeley and Newcomer 1977; Odell and Odell-Vereecken 1981).

The traces, whether of abrasion or fatigue, are often associated and are observed in various combinations dependent on how the tool is used, the consistency of the material and its mechanical properties, the type of stress and its duration. In this work, we refer only to fatigue traces. From a morphological point of view, fatigue traces are divided into longitudinal, lateral (burination), basal and transverse processes, while, in mechanical terms, these

Fundamental to this process is the investigation of functional aspects, in addition to the morphological/cultural class. The typology of the artefact 19

Experiments with Past Materialities

Fig. 1: Classification of macro fractures by impact (from Fisher et al. 1984)

sheep and simulated targets; Barton and Bergman (1982) compared the impact damage of 17 Mesolithic tips on a deer carcass in an attempt to identify differences between geometric microliths hafted solely with mastic, only with binders and with both binders and mastics. Bergman and Newcomer (1983) studied the fracture pattern of 26 lithic tips mounted on arrows resulting from impact on a simulated carcass. Guthrie (1983) performed a comparative test between deer antler points and other organic materials using 50 arrows shot from a compound bow at a moose carcass; Fischer, Vemming Hansen and Rasmussen (1984) were the first to verify, both at a macroscopic and microscopic level, the wear traces of 153 lithic points impacting on simulated carcasses, fresh carcasses of wild boar, woven grass, fish, branches and tree trunks.

are classified according to initiation and termination (cone fracture and bending fracture) (Fig.1). If the classification of macro-fracture impact summarised here (Fig. 1), adopted by the Ho Ho Committee (Ho Ho Nomenclature Committee 1979), is almost universally accepted by scholars, in spite of the debate opened by Keeley (1980), Vaughan (1985), and Newcomer et al. (1987), a unique experimental protocol is still lacking.

Impact experimentations as described in the literature The following summary (which brings together, chronologically, major documented experiments) describes briefly the objectives, the number of projectile points and the kinds of target used. It does not distinguish between experiments with lithic and organic points, as the critical issues of the experimental protocol are generally the same.

Flenniken (1985) studied the relationship between the fracture pattern and morphological changes after the first use and recovery of 11 obsidian points employed in wild goat hunting while Flenniken and Raymond (1986) continued with the same objective using 30 obsidian points, hafted as arrows, on trees, soft soil and undergrowth. Using a bow and spear-thrower, Odell and Cowan (1986) released 80 projectile points (spears and arrows) on a fresh dog carcass to verify the impact of different formal point types. Titmus and Woods (1986) used sand, soft soil, bark and wood to study the relationship between different techniques and wear traces on 34 obsidian points attached to spears. Woods (1988) used sandy soil, gravel, bark and wood to investigate the relationship of form and function of different obsidian points hafted on spears. Cox and Smith (1989) compared the fracture patterns on impact of 21 knife blades and arrows on a fresh carcass of white-tailed deer. Frison (1989) carried out a study of the impact of seven Clovis points hafted on spears on an elephant carcass. Stodiek (1990) investigated the effect that impact on deer carcasses had on joint interfaces between shafts and 22 bone and antler points. Towner and Warburton (1990) explored differences in wear traces between production and impact using obsidian points hafted on spears on seasoned wood. Shea (1988, 1993) compared experimental traces of use resulting from impact on

Laboratory experimentation should always simulate real situations in a controlled and ‘track-able’ manner. Analysing the methods used by each of these scholars, it appears that artificial targets (seldom described in detail) and carcasses in various states of preservation have been used in different ways and at different distances, as opposed to what is advised above on protocol standardisation. In this summary, only Flenniken (1985) shoots obsidian points (11) into wild goats. Tyzzer (1936), who was probably the first to experiment with different types of hafting and various fastening systems, investigated the pattern of macroscopic fracture on nine cattle bone tips shot with a bow into wood and soft soil. Ahler (1971), in trying to understand the relationship between formal types and their associated function, carried out a small number of tests on the impact of spears on the ground, while Van Buren (1974) used the ground, grass and wood to test the penetration and precision of 270 spears armed with lithic tips. Arndt and Newcomer (1986) experimented with 20 points of organic material shot with a bow at fresh carcasses of 20

Cinzia Loi and Vittorio Brizzi: New Experimental Approaches on Lithic Projectile Macro Wear Analysis: A Case Study

carcasses of cows, horses, white-tailed deer, gazelle and goat with archaeological evidence comprising more than 100 triangular points of Middle Palaeolithic/Mousterian date. Cattelain and Perpère (1993) attempted to distinguish between injuries resulting from the impact of armed points hafted on arrows and spears, directing 100 shots against goat carcasses.

remove the arrow from the body, produce fatigue and abrasion traces on the point that are quite different from those resulting from the linear motion of a projectile striking a target. Such variation could, in many cases, affect the validity of an experiment, when fractures generated experimentally are compared with those evident in the archaeological record.

Chadelle, Geneste and Plisson (1991), in two sessions, used a bow and crossbow (calibrated to simulate the kinetic energy of a spear-thrower) to compare fractures on more than 400 lithic points resulting from impact on goat carcasses as a function of their size and kinetic energy. Pokines (1993) studied 20 organic tips to observe the patterns of impact indicators on a goat carcass. Knecht (1992, 1993a, 1993b) used 23 bone and antler points hafted on spears in repeated shots at fresh goat carcasses arranged in correct anatomical order, studying the morphology of the impacts of rejuvenated points, which allowed him to identify the necessary parameters (the minimum quantity of energy to penetrate the skin of a goat) to standardise testing; he then investigated the types of fracture on different areas of impact (abdomen, vertebrae, ribs, pelvis, skull and jaw). Callahan (1994), in order to study the properties of the system of fixing shaft and point, shot 32 points hafted on spears and javelins at an elephant carcass. Finally, Knecht, in 1994, with a sample of 90 bone points, released 302 shots at a cow carcass, maintaining the standards established during his 1993 experiment; however, the results have not yet been fully published.

The choice of distance from which to shoot is also a fundamental factor due to differences in the mode of impact, point fatigue and test-target characterisation. Another limitation of ballistic testing concerns the lack of data from shots carried out over short and very short distances, a situation likely in hunting, where the hunter releases the arrow against prey ‘driven’ by, for example, a dog or another human. Under these conditions, the dynamic components of the arrow (vibration mode) change considerably the forces acting on the projectile point at impact. The resulting wear traces are likely to significantly complicate the resulting pattern. Also, shooting at short range (d