Leaf tip
The term leaf tip has been used since around 1900 for symmetrical flint tips of the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic with beech or willow leaf-like shape.
Blade tips represent a further development of the hand ax industries of the Early Paleolithic ( Acheuléen ). They are leaf-shaped, slender in longitudinal section, almost straight, more or less completely bifacial (both surfaces) and axially symmetrical with one or two tips. Compared to the hand ax or hand ax blade , they have a slimmer longitudinal and cross-section.
In 1929 Hugo Obermaier and Paul Wernert introduced the term “ leaf tip groups” for inventories of the late Middle Paleolithic in eastern Central Europe because of the lead form character (synonym: “ Altmühl Group ”, “ Szeletien ”). Leaf tips also occur in younger Gravettia , such as in Petřkovice (Moravia) and Moravany (Slovakia), without a traditional connection to the late Middle Paleolithic being demonstrable. Later, also without a certain genetic connection to the eastern Gravettia ( Pavlovia ), it is also available in the French Solutréen , here with mostly perfect surface revision. There are culturally isolated forms in the Eastern European Mesolithic , here also as grave goods. As daggers they are a common occurrence from the end of the Neolithic (late Copper Age ) to the Early Bronze Age .
The older forms were probably used as spear or lance tips . Here, too, a shaft and use as a dagger blade would be conceivable. Broad triangular shapes ( Streletskaya culture ) indicate the use as projectiles, i.e. the tips of javelins or arrows . Typologically, they are differentiated according to outline shape (“bay leaf tips”, “willow leaf tips”, “poplar leaf tips” etc .; pointed oval or D-shaped) and the type of surface revision (completely and partially bifacially retouched types). The long tradition of the blade tip concept can be explained both with the simple manufacture, which is only aimed at the end product ( core technology ), and with the functional maturity of this form as a lance or spear tip. The deductions that arise during production are irrelevant. We find an additional reason in the physical laws which are effective when splitting flint and which are particularly suitable for the creation of convex leaf shapes.
The Native Americans also made tips, which are known as projectile tips in American archeology , because research there took a slightly different route than in Eurasia. In America, high-quality stone points were made after contact with Europeans and were only replaced by metal arrowheads when they could be obtained through trade with the Europeans.
literature
- Gerhard Bosinski : The Middle Palaeolithic finds in western Central Europe (= Fundamenta. Series A: Archaeological contributions. 4, ZDB -ID 518965-2 ). Böhlau, Cologne et al. 1967, (at the same time: Cologne, university, dissertation, 1963).
- Michael Bolus: Settlement Analysis of Sites of the Blattspitzen Complex in Central Europe. In: Nicholas J. Conard (Ed.): Settlement Dynamics of the Middle Paleolithic and Middle Stone Age. Volume 2. Kerns, Tübingen, 2004, ISBN 3-935751-01-X , pp. 201-226.
- Michael Bolus: Leaf-shaped scrapers, limaces, leaf tips. In: Harald Floss (ed.). Stone artifacts. From the old Paleolithic to modern times. Kerns, Tübingen, 2013, ISBN 978-3-935751-16-2 , pp. 317-326.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hugo Obermaier : The man of the past (= man of all times. 1). Allgemeine Verlags-GmbH, Berlin et al. 1912.
- ↑ Hugo Obermaier, Paul Wernert : Old Palaeolithic with leaf types. In: Communications from the Anthropological Society in Vienna. Vol. 59, 1929, ISSN 0373-5656 , pp. 293-310, here p. 308.