Abstract:

Flint mines and quarries are a widespread phenomenon in the European Neolithic, but are difficult to characterise and to connect to broader sociocultural developments due to challenges of recognition and dating, and to a great diversity of practices across regions and time periods. Neolithic mines and quarries vary greatly in intensity, chronology, and duration of exploitation. Investigations across Europe also reveal varied spatial scales of distribution, production of prestige objects as well as items for everyday use, and widely varying functional and social contexts in which extracted stone is used.

The present volume brings together papers that address regional case studies in the context of broader sociocultural landscapes. As such, it explores the variability in mines and quarries in several regions of Neolithic Europe, with a focus on detecting and understanding changes in raw material extraction, related production activities, forms of specialisation or task differentiation, and/or linkages to other locales in technological and social networks. The 14 papers by leading researchers provide a comprehensive overview of the state of knowledge concerning various flint mining and quarrying sites in Central Europe, as well as potential avenues for understanding raw material extraction in relation to other patterns of socio-economic change across national, regional and disciplinary boundaries. The volume originates from a workshop held at Kiel University in 2022 under the auspices of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC 1266) “Scales of Transformation – Human-Environmental Interaction in Prehistoric and Archaic Societies”.

Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction
Berit Valentin Eriksen, Lynn E. Fisher

Chapter 2. Of pits and pitfalls. Neolithic flint mining in the province of Limburg (the Netherlands) between ca. 5300 and ca. 2600 BCE
Marjorie E. Th. de Grooth

Chapter 3. Socio-economic patterns evolution as exemplified by flints procurement: from Early to Middle Neolithic in western Belgium
Jean-Philippe Collin, Solène Denis

Chapter 4. Specialisation of production, specialisation of space: changes and continuities in the territorial and socio-economic patterns of Bartonian flint production in northern France 5000–3800 BCE
Françoise Bostyn

Chapter 5. Copper and flint, business cycles and the conditions of knowledge transmission: a demographic explanation
Tim Kerig

Chapter 6. Beyond mines and quarries – lithic raw material supply and circulation during the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in the Rhineland and Bavaria
Silviane Scharl, Birgit Gehlen, Jehanne Affolter, Anna-Leena Fischer, Alexander Kisslinger, Stefan Suhrbier

Chapter 7. Exploring lithic production strategies at a Neolithic chert quarry in southwest Germany: intra-quarry variation at Asch-Borgerhau
Lynn E. Fisher, Susan K. Harris, Corina Knipper, Rainer Schreg

Chapter 8. Neolithic silicite procurement in the Alpine Foreland from the 5th to the 3rd millennium BCE – a case study from the Zurich region
Kurt Altorfer, Jehanne Affolter

Chapter 9. The mining of Vienna Radiolarite – new perspectives on lithic resource management at the eastern fringe of the Alps
Michael Brandl, Oliver Schmitsberger, Martin Penz

Chapter 10. Flint supply and access in prehistoric Hungary
Katalin T. Biró

Chapter 11. Non-siliceous rocks in the context of prehistoric mining in the territory of the Czech Republic
Pavel Burgert, Antonín Přichystal

Chapter 12. Mining, use, and distribution of chocolate flint among Neolithic and Bronze Age communities in eastern Central Europe
Dagmara H. Werra

Chapter 13. Western European Late Neolithic battle axes and their meaning for the reconstruction of enduring socio-spatial patterns
Sebastian Schultrich

Chapter 14. A diachronic perspective on the mass production of flint tools in early metal using societies. Addressing the evidence of flint mines in Neolithic and Bronze Age Denmark
Berit Valentin Eriksen