Nyland A 2017; Quarrying as a socio-political strategy at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Norway (original) (raw)
Related papers
In this paper, a chaîne opératoire analysis of lithic extraction sites and direct lithic procurement form the point of departure. This study was originally part of a PhD project comprising a detailed examination and contextu-alization of 21 extraction sites located in southern Norway. The 21 sites are in different topographical settings and landscapes, in different geographical regions, and they provided people in the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age with different types of rock. I build on the results from the original study of all the sites, but I will here emphasize only a few of them. To transcend the sites' physical differences and acquire information about procurement practices, I operate with an extended notion of what constitutes a quarry. Whereas estimates of the scale of quarrying and the duration of exploitation are important, tracing the occurrence of the extracted rock away from the quarries in different dated archaeological contexts is equally necessary in order to understand the character and value of the exploitation of the procurement sites. Investigating lithic procurement from various angles, attempting to chart and visualize spatial and temporal variation in practices, different methods have been applied. An important aspect has been to establish an index of the intensity of exploitation. This enables a demonstration of a 'norm' and an 'extraordinary' manner of exploitation of quarries and other lithic procurement practices. Furthermore, lithic procurement studied as a chain of operations embeds a theoretical perspective where all practices are perceived as influenced and guided consciously or subconsciously by peoples' cultural choices, traditions and social habitus. Together with the dated and contextualized sites and procurement practices, this offers a frame for interpreting the results of my study; some practices are common cross-regionally, while others defined regions and/or time-periods. Quarry studies therefore have the potential to provide insights into developing social relations and social-political strategies. Indeed, interpreted in a wider cultural context, it seems that how, and from whom or where you obtained your rock mattered more than the type or the quality of the rock itself.
Българско е-Списание за Археология, 2017
In this paper, a chaîne opératoire analysis of lithic extraction sites and direct lithic procurement form the point of departure. This study was originally part of a PhD project comprising a detailed examination and contextualization of 21 extraction sites located in southern Norway. The 21 sites are in different topographical settings and landscapes, in different geographical regions, and they provided people in the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age with different types of rock. I build on the results from the original study of all the sites, but I will here emphasize only a few of them. To transcend the sites' physical differences and acquire information about procurement practices, I operate with an extended notion of what constitutes a quarry. Whereas estimates of the scale of quarrying and the duration of exploitation are important, tracing the occurrence of the extracted rock away from the quarries in different dated archaeological contexts is equally necessary in order...
Nyland 2016; Significant by association_In Current Swedish Archaeology vol24.pdf
Rocks and places of rock procurement can be significant beyond pragmatic reasons. In the Early Neolithic in southern Norway, specific rock types and quarries appear to have been deeply entangled in socio-political strategies that either bound people together or set people apart. Charted variations in the character of lithic procurement and distribution indicate two parallel but diverging processes of "Neolithization" in the western and eastern region respectively. In the west, rhyolite from a quarry atop Mt. Siggjo was especially significant, demonstrated by the intense quarrying and wide distribution of rhyolite along the west coast. Indeed, in the west, certain quarries appear to have been regarded as nodal points, anchoring people's sense of identity and belonging. In the east, imported flint gained a similar role because of its association with farming and Funnel Beaker-related societies in southern Scandinavia. That is, rock was significant not only due to its physical qualities, but by its association with a specific place, social or cultural group.
The Mesolithic taskscapes manifested by lithic procurement practices vary between western and eastern Norway. Some of the variations are preconditioned by the regional availability of rock because of the different geology. However, availability does not explain why some quarries, or rock types, seem to have been more important than others, why quarrying at some quarries endured while the practice was abandoned in other regions. The world of ethnography has shown that procuring rock from a specific place can be a way of tapping into the land itself, into a world of myths, or origin. Thus, rocks and places can be assigned meaning that goes beyond functional and pragmatic aspects. In this article, practices related to lithic raw material procurement manifest established taskscapes. That is, practices demonstrate regionality because they materialize societies' varied relations to land, rock and place. Applying the concept of taskscape in this context is a way of emphasising spatial and temporal dimensions of human practices and lived-in landscapes. Comparative research of quarries in southern Norway has shown that from the establishment of regular quarrying in the Middle Mesolithic to the end of the Late Mesolithic the practices involved in lithic procurement changed. Furthermore, there are also regional differences in the intensity of quarrying, in the duration of use of certain quarries, and in the character of distribution of rock from known quarries. In western Norway, two quarries in particular had by the end of the Mesolithic turned into significant places of evident ancestral presence, and thereby become entangled in the maintenance of symbolic and social structures. In eastern Norway, developments from the Middle Mesolithic to the Late Mesolithic had taken a different path.
Traffic in stone adzes in Mesolithic western Norway (2003)
Stone adzes of greenstone and diabase from the quarries at Hespriholmen and Stakaneset were distributed throughout Western l{orway. The main distribution areas of these two raw materials are restricted to a northern and a soutltern region. These regions overlap slightly in the district of ltrordhordland. The aim of this paper rs to investigate whether the adzes were the results of exchange or direct access. It is argued here that within these two regions, adzes were mainly acquired through direct ac'Cess, while the more iimited flow of adzes across the overlap-zone in lr{ordhordland were exchanged. The exchange relations were most likely organised in the context of ethnic relations in the boundary area.
Quaternary International, 2016
Formal technologies and intensified reduction are often seen as responses to increased mobility and low abundance of lithic raw material of good flakeability and controllability. In this paper, we discuss an alternative explanation to this hypothesis using the change in tool raw material experienced by flintusing pioneers, as they had to go from a formal blade technology to a simple flake technology as they settled in Scandinavia. The region is dominated by quartz, and we use use-wear data as a means to evaluate the role of this type of raw material compared to the use profile of flint assemblages in the home territories of the pioneers. Although the technology changed through simplification and loss of formal production rules, due to the low workability of quartz, we conclude that changes in the foraging range into areas of different quality tool raw materials does not need formalization of the technology. The quartz in our sample was produced with a simple platform/bipolar technology and used for a wide variety of activities in every aspect comparable to the range of uses identified in the contemporaneous blade assemblages based on flint. Instead of formalization of the lithic technology to cope with different quality raw materials, it was diversified and simplified. The organisational dimensions and design criteria of the bone technology, whereby simple flakes were used as insets in slotted tools, did not have to change in this process.