Stock (prehistory and early history)
In the prehistoric and early historic archeology is meant by scarf joint different during the pre- and early history applied bonding techniques . Several (usually two) parts are by scarf joint connected to a more complex device. In prehistory and early history, tools or weapons were connected to a handle. The scarf made it possible to use the device or increased its effectiveness. The power and range of hunting weapons have been improved.
The handle part of the tool or weapon is called the shaft . An elongated tool shank is also stalk called. In the Stone Age , shafts were made of wood, antlers, bone, horn or ivory. The shaft is connected to the blade or point, which can be made of metal from the Bronze Age .
Businessed devices are also referred to as compound devices or composite devices . The latter are not to be confused with combination devices , these are multifunction devices ).
Overview
Composite tools and weapons were developed from the late Middle Paleolithic and refined from the Upper Paleolithic . The beginnings of this technique, which is often seen in connection with the development of human language, go back at least 400,000 years. They can be found worldwide, if not at the same time.
In the past , a shaft was usually made of wood or some other sufficiently stable biological material. The blade was made of a harder material, initially mostly stone. From the late Bronze Age onwards, shafts were sometimes made of metal, especially for show weapons.
Since the shaft was always made of perishable material, it is difficult to prove a shaft in early finds and usually only indirectly possible, for example by inferring a probable shaft from the type of retouching . Experimental archeology can provide further information . Experiments with knives and blades from the Upper Paleolithic showed that, because of the surrounding sharp edge, they must have been shanked in order to be useful.
The stock is an important indicator for the socio-cultural development of prehistoric and early historical people. This is comparable to the cognitive boost that the targeted tool manufacture itself represents. The same applies to the so-called hunting revolution, the beginning use of fire in the Old Paleolithic, the development of progressive tools in general or the emergence of art in the Upper Paleolithic, such as the Franco-Cantabrian cave art .
Purposes of the stock
handling
Shafts create handles that make the devices easier to carry and handle. The effectiveness may also be increased. Thick trees could be felled with a stocked ax, but difficult to do with a ax blade alone.
It is controversial whether some hand axes were already in use . In the Upper Paleolithic there are numerous stocked tools, including burins , knives, drills and scrapers. The shaft protected the hand from the sharp edges and enabled more precise guidance of the sometimes small devices. Penknife had to use already well just scarfed because of their small size. In the Lascaux cave , remnants of a reddish putty were found, which show that the retouched edge of the knife was set against a shaft.
Distance and long-distance effect
An early ranged weapon is the lance , a thrust weapon. The javelin is the first long-range weapon. Lances and spears made of wood were originally only cut to a point. The 125,000 year old, 2.24 m long lance from Lehringen did not yet have a shaft, but a fire-hardened wooden point. Putting a sharp stone point on a wooden shaft (or the shaft of a stone point) was an advantage when hunting. The sharper and harder point increased the hunting success and the safety of the hunter.
The bow and arrow are an even more effective long-range weapon (range over 100 meters, rapid firing sequences possible). The shaft did not have to be reinvented for arrows because the shafts of lances and spears existed long before archery. Because of the low weight of arrows, the use of a sharp point is an essential requirement for hunting with a bow and arrow.
materials
The following materials were mainly used in the Stone Age.
For tips and blades:
- Rock and minerals, in particular flint , quartz , quartzite , slate . The basic requirement was the precise and controllable cleavage, which had to result in a sharp edge. Obsidian was also particularly popular . Suitable types of stone were specifically mined and traded in the Neolithic at the latest.
- Horn, antlers, bones and ivory, in East Asia also bamboo.
- Cleaver blades made from robust mussels are also known from Oceania, particularly Micronesia (e.g. Tridacna gigas ).
For the shaft:
- Different types of wood, depending on availability. The wood had to be firm and elastic at the same time, without the tendency to splinter and not too heavy. Elm, yew and ash as well as field maple and pine were popular, and in East Asia also bamboo. The shafts have been carefully smoothed. The Lehringer spear experimentally required five hours (comparison: making hand ax approx. 15 minutes).
- Horn, antler, bone and ivory.
For fixation:
- Stable plant fibers, strips of bark and leather or small branches.
- Naturally occurring or easy to manufacture adhesives such as birch pitch, resin, and later also glue.
In the Bronze Age, bronze was used for tips and blades (later sometimes also for the shaft). During the Iron Age, bronze was replaced by the harder wrought iron and then only used for decorative elements.
Shaft types and methods in the Stone Age
Stock types
There are different types of stone-age stock. The same types of shafts occur in metal times, but expanded with rivet shafts etc.
- Clamped shaft: The blade or point is clamped into the shaft.
- Binding shaft: The blade or point is tied to the shaft with cords, leather straps or sinews.
- Adhesive joint: The blade or point is attached to the shaft with adhesives.
- Dornschäftung: A Schäftungsdorn at the tip or blade is inserted into a hole at the shank end. If the length is greater, one speaks of a shaft tongue (see picture on the right).
- Grommet shaft: At the end of the point or blade or the shaft there is a recess or hollow into which the part to be connected is inserted. Intermediate pieces can also be connected with a grommet .
- Hollow shaft: either the shaft or the blade is pierced. Holes can be cast in metal blades. Cast-on eyelets are also found on metal ax blades.
Two or more techniques are usually combined. A hatchet, for example, can be clamped to the wooden handle and at the same time glued and tied. Some basic working methods are described in more detail below.
Binding stock:
Dechseln and hatchet from the Marshall and Yap IslandsGrommet shaft:
bronze grommet axes from the Burnham depot findHole stock:
Neolithic stone axes, cord ceramics , approx. 2500 BC Chr.
Methods
Clamps
The clamp or slotted shaft is a tool holder made of wood or antler with a gap in which a blade or point has been wedged. The blade or point was also fixed by wrapping it around, later also by gluing. The clamp stock is one of the oldest stock methods. The oldest finds are the clamp shafts that were found together with the Schöninger spears . They may be 400,000 years old.
A gap for clamping can also be worked into a tip. In the Upper Paleolithic Vogelherd Cave , in addition to bullet tips made of antlers with a round base for a binding shaft, which were presumably attached to the shaft, there were also those with a split base into which the shaft was inserted. In the case of the bone tips with a split base, which are particularly common in the Aurignacia, it is believed that the split should create a kind of spring effect for a better hold.
Tie
Fixation by tying the blade to the shaft. Cords made of plant fibers such as raffia, damp leather straps or sinews were used, which tightened after drying and possibly resulted in a hard, firm connection with pitch.
The simplest binding was the loop shaft , in which you put an elastic twig or split branch around the stone ax and twist the two ends tightly to the shaft and tied together at the back. The method was mostly used for simple, long and narrow lamellas that could be easily worked with a thinner neck.
In the other case, a blade was placed directly on a shaft head prepared by chopping and scraping, clamped there and then tied by wrapping around both ends of the shaft slot or, in the case of projectile tips, only the lower end to fix the shaft mandrel. This type of shaft can be found in many ancient cultures around the world. The curly ends of a point usually indicate that there was a tie shaft here as well. They also acted as barbs.
The knee pick is a special form , as can be seen on wall paintings in ancient Egypt and still in Africa today. Another binding is led diagonally up to the middle of the shaft, so that a triangle of blade, shaft and diagonal bond is created, which additionally stabilizes tools with high loads such as hoes or dicks via the middle of the shaft. Typical here are the extraordinarily long, often wooden and slightly curved blades in hoes, which would otherwise not be usable due to the strong leverage at the blade tip.
glue
Gluing is already one of the more developed stock techniques. The main adhesives were wood tar , tree resins such as birch pitch and glue . Archaeological evidence indicates that the first composite tools were made without adhesives.
From the Middle Paleolithic onwards, adhesives were used in three regions:
- In Europe, the earliest evidence of the use of birch pitch comes from Campitello in Italy (approx. 200,000 BP ), from Inden / Altdorf (approx. 120,000 BP) and Königsaue in Germany (approx. 80,000–40,000 BP ka ) and from Les Vachons in France (around 30,000 BP).
- In the Levant , bitumen was used in Umm el Tlel and Hummal in Syria (approx. 40,000 BP).
- In Africa, the use of a multi-component adhesive made from gum arabic , ocher and fat for Sibudu in South Africa (approx. 70,000 BP) has been proven.
While bitumen occurs naturally, birch pitch, rubber and ocher, as well as the glue that was used relatively late, must be produced in multi-step processes that require a lot of experience and control of various factors and require a more developed mind.
Drill
The stone drilling is not an invention of the Neolithic Age, because it was already used to perforate small objects such as teeth, shells or pearls since the early Paleolithic, but with the help of burins and without turning the drill or sanding aids. In the Neolithic, on the other hand, stone drilling with the help of a rotating drill head and emery effects, like the technologically related stone grinding, is a characteristic feature. In all techniques, the drilling site was first marked by picking.
Grommet: An incomplete perforation , i.e. not a complete through-hole, is called a grommet . It is mainly found in the spout axes , which, unlike the ax, do not have a complete perforation, but also in lances and spears. The blade was inserted into the socket on the shaft, which is often made of antler, and fastened with loops and possibly also with pitch . Often there is an intermediate lining for shock absorption. Such grommet axes can be found at the earliest in the Mesolithic , but especially in the Neolithic. The technology is already highly complex.
Punching: Drilling in organic material has been known since the Upper Paleolithic, in hard rock since the Mesolithic. There were two basic techniques here: the fake hole and the real hole .
In the case of the fake drilling, hourglass-shaped depressions were created by picking on both sides, which left a double hole.
A further distinction is made in real drilling:
- The full drilling was carried out with a rapidly rotating drill head made of hard material, possibly with the help of sand as emery. The hallmark is the V-shaped borehole.
- In the hollow bore or pin hole hollow wood, hollow bones, or reed which is accumulated around the drill will be used as a rapidly rotating drilling aid, where the actual grinding operation is carried out by quartz sand. Usually drilling is done from two sides. One-sided drilling creates a conical pin that falls out. The technique is less time consuming than full drilling.
Intermediate pieces and intermediate lining
Intermediate pieces (crossbars) were not only used for simple cross-sharpening, but also for shock absorption and stabilization of the blade. Last but not least, they should prevent the shaft from breaking. From the Neolithic onwards, they play an important role in the sharpening of ax blades.
It is usually a straight piece of antler, bone, ivory or wood as a setting for the blade. A transverse hole at the other end was used to accommodate the shaft or just a socket. Antler material was preferred because of its elasticity and hardness.
Intermediate chucks , which could also be inserted directly into the shaft or into the opening of the intermediate piece, increased the shock absorption and also allowed the use of smaller blades. (This technology can still be found today in devices with exchangeable blades, e.g. screwdrivers .)
A distinction is made between simple intermediate chucks with or without a through hole, with tenons, without and with a mandrel or with wings. The pin prevented the shaft hole from bursting, which was particularly important in the later hatches of the Bronze and Iron Ages, where this technique was then used as standard. On the other hand, the tenon increased the susceptibility of the intermediate lining to breakage. Simple cones can already be found in the Mesolithic, intermediate linings with detached cones only appear in the early Neolithic , in southern Germany on Lake Constance possibly mediated by the so-called Wauwil ceramic group.
Tools and weapons of the stone age
In particular:
- large blades (hatchet, adze, hoe, ax)
- small blades and lamellas (knives, scrapers, drills, burins)
- whole stones (stone club, hammer)
- large points (lance, spear)
- small points and microliths (arrow, harpoon, sickle, saw)
Above all, stone-age stock methods are described here. The Metal Age methods build on them, but also show deviations due to the material used and are therefore represented under the Copper, Bronze and Iron Ages.
Axes
The first stone axes and wooden handles were used in the Upper Paleolithic, but mainly in the Mesolithic. The shafting of Neolithic axes is well known due to the numerous wetland settlements in southwest Germany and Switzerland.
In archeology, a hatchet is a piece of rock or flint with a seldom completely symmetrical, usually slightly asymmetrical cutting edge that is parallel to the shaft, with the entire blade either indirectly attached via a horizontal intermediate piece or directly in the shaft perforation and the ax neck protrudes beyond or ends with it.
Pieces with a transverse cutting edge are called adzes (depending on size, shape and the depending on the scarf, also called cross hatchet, broad hatchet , flat hatchet, badger hatchet or shoe last wedge). It is a small, often one-handed ax with a slightly asymmetrical blade (similar to the modern carpenter's ax) for woodworking, which was especially developed in the form of the long shoe last wedge for the early ceramic agricultural communities of the Balkans in the second half of the 6th millennium BC. Is considered typical. Along with microliths and axes, such cross and disk axes are typical tools of the Mesolithic. Even in the early and middle Neolithic, when there was ever more extensive clearing, they were one of the most important tools in Europe.
There are three main forms of axes:
- The core ax , the blade of which was obtained using nuclear technology .
- The target ax was produced using the knock-off technique .
- The cylinder ax : also using the knock-off technique, but then ground like a cylinder.
Core axes and disc axes are almost only found north of the Elbe: in Scandinavia, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Holland and south-east England. Disc axes, which were made from a flint disc and clamped in a wooden handle, were mainly used for debarking trees and chopping out dugout canoes. In the Mesolithic, they may have been a more durable form than the core axes and seem to be slowly replacing them. Remnants of pitch pitch were found on some ax blades. One therefore assumes a shaft with intermediate lining made of antlers. A filling made of raffia or leaves, for example, provided hold. Occasionally the hatchet was picked secondarily for this purpose .
The following special forms can be found:
- Knee spar: With him, the blade of the adze was tied above or below to a piece of branch branching off the shaft like a knee or to an antler shoot (upper or lower stock).
- Wing spar: with wing-shaped spar.
- Grommet hatchets: Grommets were available with or without an intermediate lining. The spout was stuck in the handle hole and was glued and / or tied there.
- Antler ax and antler hatchet: A piece of antler with a beveled edge was drilled through for the use of the shaft. The other end of the antler piece was sometimes provided with a socket to hold a stone blade, so that a combination of antler ax and antler ax was created.
In North America, the first unpolished ax blades ( celts ) can be found in the Dalton culture in the southeast and in the Windust phase in the plateau area, both from 8500 BC. In South America the first ax blades already have a polished cutting edge (around 7000 BC). In Mesoamerica and the central Andean region, which later show the highest cultural development, ax blades only appear from 2000 BC. Chr.
A distinction is made between several ax types for Oceania, which, according to Robert Heine-Geldern, are relevant for the Neolithic settlement of the area from East Asia. See colonization of Oceania .
Chop
Hoes are principally Mesolithic tools. In archeology, this is mostly used to refer to devices for Europe that, unlike dechs, are made entirely of antlers or, less often, at least partially made of bone, but also have a blade that is perpendicular to the shaft. Few blades are made of flint like those from Nižnie Veretie I in northern Russia (approx. 7050–6520 BC), but they may imitate antler picks. They were made from a pierced shoulder blade or a shovel of deer or elk antlers, the branching rungs of which were either removed, after which the remnant piece at the end was drilled through for a wooden shaft, or a part of the shaft was used and the stump was pierced Middle rung so that it served as a setting for the stem.
But also in the Yangtze River Valley of China, hoes with shaft holes made of bone and polished stone were found, which document early agriculture there in the 5th millennium. For Melanesia , even 11,000 year old, polished and ground hoes have been found in the Kafiavana site, which were probably used for clearing bushes.
However, hoes are not only used in woodworking, but also in soil cultivation, because cross-axes are especially suitable for working on surfaces, while straight axes are used for chopping notches. However, axes were also used as weapons, as the skeletal findings from the Talheim mass grave show.
A special form of hoes are the picks , which were used in mining to extract flint, especially from the Neolithic onwards. Instead of a cutting edge, they have a point. They are also likely to have been used in the large buildings of the megalithic culture (Neolithic and Bronze Age).
Axes
An ax has a perforation in the blade or at least a spout, so it is archaeologically defined by the type of shaft. The distinction between hatchets and axes that are always found without handles is not always clear. The conical shaft was inserted into the hole in the ax blade, which was attached by simply hammering it open, with water sometimes causing the round shafts to swell.
The battle ax , a stone ax used as a weapon with a shaft hole and a hammer head opposite the cutting edge, is found outside the Nordic area among the corded ceramists and east of it between 2800 and 2400 BC. It is the common feature of several Neolithic cultures, apart from the corded ceramic culture, especially the Nordic individual grave culture , while it is completely absent in the subsequent bell- beaker people.
Battle axes come in various special forms: Amazon axes, knaufhammer axes, hammer axes. A Nordic special form is the boat ax , a battle or hammer ax of the individual grave culture. It takes its name from the boat-like shape when viewed from the side and has a similar shape around the shaft hole.
Clubs
The shafts of clubs are very similar to hatchets and axes. Because of the round shape of the club head, this was particularly difficult, so that well-made clubs were rare. Clubs are considered primeval attack weapons. The first copper club heads (Mesopotamia, approx. 2500 BC) are considered to be the first use of metal beyond decorative purposes.
Shoped clubs have existed from the early Mesolithic (rubble clubs) up to the Neolithic and ethnologically in many cases until today, for example in New Zealand, where they are often not shoped, but made from noble materials such as jade. Archaeologically, however, they are rather rare compared to hatchets and axes. In Mesoamerica, however, they were an important combat weapon. They are the successors to the unused wooden clubs.
Club heads come in several forms:
- Little modified scree from existing tubers with a perforation in the middle.
- A clumsy shape, elongated, with a constriction around the middle to attach the shaft.
- Disc lobes: round and flat, raised around the central hole.
- Conical clubs.
- Pear-shaped clubs and, as a mixed form, conical-pear-headed clubs.
- Double pointed lobes: oblong with two conical tips.
Perforation: by funnel-shaped picking or full drilling. Since the Neolithic also as a hollow bore.
The hoes of the Lyngby culture are considered very old forms , they resemble the older bone implements from Zhoukoudian and Bilzingsleben . In Maglemosia there is a type that may have evolved from the cylinder ax. There are other special forms in Campignien . Some shapes imitate pure wooden or antler clubs.
Clubs were probably used as a weapon and to kill animals. Pure wooden clubs much older. A wooden club found near Kalambo Falls (Zambia) is 200,000 years old. The use of clubs has even been observed in chimpanzees.
Hammers
Instead of a cutting edge as with the ax, the hammer has a striking surface. The origin is considered to be the mostly unused Hammerstein (Klopfstein, Schlagstein), which was used until the end of the Neolithic, which was used in tool manufacture (so-called spheroid) to achieve reductions and which has already been proven as the oldest tool among the bonobos . The oldest working hammers date from the end of the Upper Paleolithic. They were used above all from the Mesolithic.
They are usually handled like axes with a hole in the blade or like a hatchet with a hole in the shaft or with a clamp shaft. Special forms are combinations with hatchet or ax, such as the hammer ax of the Aichbühler Gruppe Oberschwabens, the battle ax of the individual grave culture or the Scandinavian boat axes. In the mesolithic, pierced hammer heads made of hardwood are occasionally found; light hammers were also made from antler material. From the Bronze and Iron Ages, hammer heads were increasingly made of metal, but stone hammers can still be found up to the Iron Age.
Lances and spears
The transition between lance and spear is fluid and archaeologically often not exactly ascertainable. Lances as thrust weapons can be very long and often have large, heavy tips . Shorter lances can also have been thrown over shorter distances and thus form the transition to the shorter and lighter spear. Spears are throwing weapons with a smaller point. There were also small, slim spears for piercing fish.
Before the invention of the stock, lances and spears were simple wooden poles, sharpened on one side. Such spears already existed in the late Paleolithic (see Schöninger Speere ). It was only in the late Middle Paleolithic that spears were demonstrably provided with a separate point made of hard material. In South Africa, however, several hundred spikes made of ribbon iron ore were found northwest of the city of Kathu , an average of 7 cm long, the shape and fine cracks of which indicate that they were used as spearheads. They come from a layer that is approximately 500,000 years old. This would be the oldest evidence of barbed spears.
The oldest barbed lance was found at Clacton-on-Sea . It is sometimes interpreted as a spear, because it is only 40 cm long. Presumably only a blade tip was pushed into the shaft slot , which came off the shaft after it hit the shaft and remained in the carcass. A wooden lance two and a half meters long and three centimeters thick, also without the associated tip, was found in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt (Haas quarry). It is around 250,000 to 300,000 years old and was assigned to Homo erectus .
The shaft had to be stable, especially with large lances. With spears it was often enough if the point got stuck in the prey, so that the connection to the shaft could be less tight. The tips were mostly made of stone, e.g. B. the Gravette tips . Shorter spears, in particular, often had bone points. The tips have altogether a great variety of shapes. In the Aurignacia there is a multitude of shaft types, which already contain all those that occur later.
- Stone tips were probably clamped into the split tip of the shaft, glued with resin and additionally tied with straps, sinews or bast.
- Flint tips were cemented into a carved groove in the shaft and wrapped around it. With a round base they received a socket, with a flat base they were attached directly in the shaft gap.
- Flint microliths were inserted into two opposite grooves on the spear head and cemented into place.
- In the case of tips made of antlers, bone or ivory, the shaft was prepared differently: as a round or pointed nozzle, conical, split or beveled, or it was given a stem. The tips were attached by wrapping. A break-prone, but mechanically favorable variant is a point with a forked base. It creates a particularly strong connection between the tip and the shaft.
The Paleo-Indian Clovis and Folsom tips have fluting that is suitable for a special shaft . It is particularly pronounced in the Folsom tips.
Arrows
Bows and arrows are a complicated, late development in hunting technology. The oldest arrowheads found come from the Upper Paleolithic (approx. 30,000 BP). Complete arrows are only preserved from 9,000 BP in northern Central Europe ( Hamburg culture and Ahrensburg culture ) and around the same time in South Africa.
Arrows could be feathered and consist of many components as a whole. The attachment of the tip had to be very stable, as strong forces are generated on impact. In the Mesolithic, arrowheads developed an enormous wealth of shapes.
There were tips with and without a handle. Tips without a stem can be concave, convex, or flat at the base. Arrowheads were either inserted into a socket on the shaft or into the split shaft and glued or wrapped. Arrowheads from damp settlements still contained remains of birch pitch. Composite arrowheads were also found: narrow gaps were carved into a bony point, microliths were inserted there and fixed with resin.
Harpoons
Harpoons are often carved entirely from bone or antler. But there are also shafts with microliths and separate bullet tips made of horn or bone. A barbed point gets stuck in the prey. Hence, it must be attached so that it can separate while the shaft remains in the hunter's hand. The tip remains connected to the shaft with a cord so that the prey is not lost.
Sickles and saws
Sickles or harvest knives were used in early agriculture from the Meso- and Neolithic. The earliest sickles date from between 9000 and 8500 BC. And were found in Iraq and Israel.
The sickle blades, mostly made of flint , consisted of a single, two curved or many small blades (microliths), which were embedded in a slot in the thickened middle part of a curved wooden or antler handle and cemented with pitch . Sometimes in the Mesolithic period pieces of antler were so densely packed with microliths that one can speak of a saw . A polished stone knife with seven shaft holes from the 5th millennium was found in the Yangtze Valley.
It is typical of the Neolithic, otherwise very diverse sickles that the handles curve more and more over time. The most strongly curved specimens, which first appear in south-eastern Europe and in the Danube culture , then evidently formed the models for the sickles of the Bronze Age.
Cultural-historical periodics in Europe
The well - known three-period system has proven itself as a rough ordering system . However, it was designed primarily for European conditions. For other cultural areas, different cultural-historical classification criteria apply in part, which are also important for intercultural comparison. For periodicals and special cases outside of Europe, see Prehistoric and Early Historical Terminology and Systematics .
The focus of the following presentation is on the European, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern and Near Eastern cultural areas. Parallel developments took place in other parts of the world. With a technical problem like the stock, similar solutions had to be found everywhere. Neighboring cultures interacted. Cultural contexts range from Europe to the vast plains of Russia and even to China. From East Asia, across the steppe belt, effects on western cultures have repeatedly occurred, such as those that could manifest themselves in the Gundestrup basin from Denmark. Such contacts worked both ways. For example, bronzes from the steppe in China during the Shang period were found, for example knives from Karasuk , axles with a handle or spearheads from the Ural region, etc.
Stone age
Old Stone Age
Early Paleolithic
In the early and middle phases of the Old Paleolithic there are no scarfings to be found, which does not mean that they could not have existed in their original form. In the final phase of the Old Paleolithic, the first verifiable scarfings appear. In addition to the Schöninger clamp shafts, there are finds of sticks with notches at the ends, which indicate that people were already trading equipment 400,000 years ago. Scrapers , scrapers and points or pointed blades were often only useful in shafts. In the Sangoan and Lupemban of the late Acheulean Africa in particular , there may have been business hatchets, as their use was hardly possible without a shaft. At the place where it was found in Bilzingsleben (around 370,000 BP) the devices were still unused, such as the so-called “Urbeil von Bilzingsleben” and spears with a sharpened end.
Middle Paleolithic
In the Middle Paleolithic there were no significant further developments, but there was an expansion of the stock to other devices. The derivation of the Middle Paleolithic cultures from the Old Paleolithic ones is in any case unproblematic. Typical signs of use were found on some Middle Paleolithic cuts without further retouching. Many scrapers, points and knives, typical products of the Levallois knocking off technique, especially the Moustérien , show signs of use. In addition, residues of adhesives such as birch pitch were found, some with tool marks. Projectile tips are now common and appear for the first time in special shapes, especially as blade tips , which must have been shanked in order to be usable.
Upper Paleolithic
The first culture to be described as modern emerged in the Upper Paleolithic . You will find a creative and dynamic range of services in technology and art here. The stone technology now works from aurignacia to magdalenia and epigravettia more varied and shows more frequent innovations. Elongated and even cuts were made that could be easily managed. These new blade shapes established themselves in different variants throughout Eurasia. All of these types can be traced back to the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic.
The stocking technique is expanding accordingly and with it the use of materials such as wood, bone, horn or ivory. Sharps are common, for example with slats, i.e. very small blades that need a handle. A typical product is the shaft tongue tip with a U- or V-shaped notch towards the shaft. It occurs mainly as Atérien or Gravettien tip as well as in the Bromme-Lyngby culture of Northern Europe. It was used as a spear or lance tip.
In the north-west of Africa, stalked atéri tips are the first clear evidence of a stock at all.
Late Paleolithic
In the late Paleolithic , the shafting of arrowheads was a prerequisite for the bow and arrow technique. Upper Palaeolithic cusps have been probably also intended for a scarf joint. It is possible that the universal device of the Paleolithic, the scraper , was now also sometimes in use. The so-called handle scraper of the Ertebölle culture is Mesolithic.
Middle Stone Age (Mesolithic)
The tools and weapons of the Mesolithic age differed from the Palaeolithic by a certain simplification and flattening of some stone blades and, on the other hand, by the development of new types of tools that were required for the beginning agriculture. For the blade and point production mainly flint was used, in addition to slate, quartz and rock (which you had to peck and not work with the cutting technique). Wood, antlers and bones were increasingly used for the new devices. Evidence is difficult, however, because the shafts were made of perishable materials and could only be recovered in damp settlements such as those on the Swiss lakes, Lake Constance or Lake Federsee.
Above all, the scarfing of microliths is now beginning to expand significantly, especially in Scandinavia. However, due to their small size (max. 1 cm wide and 3 cm long, but they also exist in the millimeter range), microliths are difficult to find or no longer preserved. They have also long been overlooked in research. Microliths also served as arrowheads, with various methods of scarfing being used (pinch scarf, binding scarf, adhesive scarfing). From the late Mesolithic Ertebølle culture , such tips spread all over Europe. Sometimes there are projectile points made of bones into which microliths have been inserted, such as long spearheads. A double shaft was necessary: first the two-sided trimming of the bone point with several triangular microliths, then the connection of this point with the wooden spear shaft. In the Mesolithic, arrow and spearheads showed a great variety of shapes, as did harpoons.
Hatchets with stone blades and wooden handles were made in the younger Paleolithic, but on a large scale only in the Mesolithic, when forest areas began to be cleared. In the Mesolithic they were still retouched (in the Neolithic, however, they were picked or ground). The shanked flint ax is considered one of the most important inventions of the Mesolithic.
Tillage hoes are a new type of Mesolithic tool. The shaft is usually made on a socket with an additional loop shaft. In addition to bone picks, there were antler picks made from a T-shaped piece of antler. With bone chopping, the bones were sharpened and pierced and placed on a wooden shaft, where they were fixed in different ways. Antler hooks occur mainly in the north, for example in the area of the Ertebølle culture. There were many variants of the stocking of the antlers, in some cases they were also used as hoes without the stocking.
Neolithic
The change to agriculture and animal husbandry and the sedentary lifestyle that went with it changed societies profoundly (see Neolithic Revolution ). Trade is increasing and the exchange of goods and technology is accelerating. Stone grinding and stone drilling techniques continue to be used for stocking, for example with hatchets, axes and daggers. Various sources now indicate the beginning of professional series production, combined with specialization in craftsmanship. A standstill can sometimes be observed with simple small tools that were still made by the company itself, but not with arrowheads, spearheads and fishing gear. Some stone arrow and spearheads (for example in Spain) are so finely worked that they clearly imitate prototypes made of copper. In addition to hunting weapons, there are increasing numbers of combat weapons, and weapons can also serve religious and representative functions.
Daggers: A special feature of the late Neolithic are the flint daggers , retouched and shanked pointed blades. They are also known as chip daggers. There were also daggers retouched on both surfaces. There are two types according to the stock:
- Wrapped with two pasture rods and glued with tar. The ends of the rods are fixed by inserting them into the winding.
- Gluing a beech pommel with tar, wrapping it with a fir branch, fixing it with a tape.
Flint daggers occur at times as likely that one the last Neolithic stage of culture in northern Central Europe to their dagger-time calls. The daggers there replaced the stone ax as a weapon. They initially had no handle, later a thickened wooden handle. Daggers were also status symbols. Some of them were carried in a fabric-lined leather sheath and were often found as grave goods. The fishtail daggers are considered to be the most highly developed form .
Axes and hatchets: Different types are now developing, which differ in terms of blade and shaft. There is even a combination tool consisting of an ax (or hatchet) and adze, comparable to today's fire department ax . The key to differentiating between different types is the bore in relation to the center of gravity of the blade:
- Club axes and battle axes with the hole in focus,
- Hammer axes with the hole between the cutting edge and the center of gravity,
- Working axes with the hole between the center of gravity and the neck,
- Wedge axes with a hole near the back of the neck.
Large stone axes were used for heavy clearing work, wedge axes for splitting tree trunks. Hammer axes were used either with the neck as a hammer or with the edge as a splitting ax. Round or square club axes could have a cutting edge.
Axes are used as weapons and status symbols from the end of the Neolithic period on ceramics, but especially in the Metal Age (see battle ax ).
The cult function of the ax is evidenced by a 6,000-year-old ax of the Chassey-Lagozza-Cortaillod culture found near Cham-Eslen in Switzerland in Lake Zug in 1999 . Its 17.2 cm long double ax body was attached to the 1.2 m long ash wood shaft by means of wedges made of antlers . This was wrapped spirally with rhombus decorated birch bark . The shaft of the ax from grave 43 in the cemetery of Varna in Bulgaria was wrapped in a gold strip.
Harvest knives and sickles have existed in the Middle East since the Natufian . They are a typical tool of the Neolithic. There are at least eight types of shaft, from very simple shapes with wooden shafts to curved shafts along the blade, some with microlith inserts. They consisted of several shafted blades that were retouched to the required length, or of numerous microliths. If the microliths are rich, these devices can also be interpreted as saws. Other harvest knives are carefully crafted from one piece of flint.
Understanding the Metal Age
The copper and bronze ages begin differently in Europe. The same applies to the transition to the Iron Age. In China, too, the boundaries between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age are not clear. The bronze casting techniques developed there faster and reached a higher degree of perfection than elsewhere, as did the later iron casting techniques.
The Copper Age is a transitional phase and is generally counted as the " Copper Age " to the end of the Neolithic. The first copper axes with handle holes appear at the beginning of the 4th millennium BC. In the Carpathian Basin of Hungary. Overall, long transition times are to be expected. Gold objects as well as weapons made of copper and flint were found in the Copper Age burial ground of Varna on the Black Sea (approx. 4600/4000 BC). In later graves of the Metal Age, copper and bronze objects can be found next to each other, later iron objects as well.
While Stone Age devices are handcrafted and vary widely, the molds of the Metal Age are increasingly leading to standardization. The shafts had to be adapted to the metal blades, or they were even cast with the blade as a whole. Weapons technology is becoming increasingly important.
Copper and Bronze Ages
Because of the softness of copper, metal technology was mostly still carried out by hand and sometimes cold. Ötzi had a copper edge ridge ax with him that has been preserved. Such products were only of limited use, however, because copper quickly becomes dull. Before the development of harder bronze , metal objects were therefore only of limited use as weapons.
Bronze was a valuable material. It was mainly used for weapons, which were also status symbols. Pouring in molds enabled great advances in weapon technology. Everyday tools, on the other hand, were made in the Stone Age tradition for a long time.
Hatchets and axes
Beile: They were used both as ostentatious objects, for example in the burial mound culture of central and northern Europe, and as weapons. In the Aegean Sea and later also in Central Europe, the special shape of the rag ax emerged, in which the blade was prevented from slipping in the shaft using tricks in the casting and the shaft. While the first metal axes are derived in their shape from stone flat axes and were only cast in copper or bronze, in the course of the Bronze Age a number of own developments and technological improvements were made, and edge strips, lobes or cast-in spouts were developed. Such spout axes were not only found in the European cultural area, but also, for example, in the early phase of the North Vietnamese Ban Chiang culture from the Bronze Age there.
Raised edge strips on the sides of the shaft should prevent the hatchet from slipping. The bronze heel axes are even more useful . A shoulder is cast into the blade path on which the wooden shaft end can rest. With the flap axes that develop from this, conical, inwardly curved “flaps” absorb the forces that arise during work. Finally, an eyelet is also cast as a scarfing aid, to which the binding can be attached. Then the shaft was inserted into a spout without having to split the shaft beforehand. For the stock, a suitable angled wooden stock was split open at its short end and fitted into the stock flap. A wrapping of bronze wire or other material, e.g. B. strips of leather, fixed the ax body in addition. Illustrations on: .
Ax: It was still a civil tool, but was given a new function as a battle ax and as a status symbol in the Neolithic period , which can be inferred from the fact that axes were mostly found in men's graves and hoards throughout Europe, a function that they continued into retained late Middle Ages. This can be proven for the first time for the Northern European individual grave culture , the Central European corded ceramic culture, which is therefore sometimes also called battle ax culture , and to the east of it.
Until the Bronze Age it was a stone ax used as a weapon with a shaft hole and a hammer head opposite the cutting edge. In the late Neolithic period, it occasionally imitated the bronze cast that was already in existence at that time, and there were different types depending on the shape of the shaft and the blade and the design of the neck:
- the hammer ax ,
- Concave axes,
- Convex axes.
Numerous simple flat axes have been found in depot finds as well as in burials, for example in stone box graves in Spain or in England in the Late Bronze Age. The same applies to the narrow double axes of the early Bronze Age Aunjetitz culture , which appeared as pierced shafts and exported their bronze objects - especially hatchets and daggers - to Scandinavia, which was still Neolithic, and had clear contacts to other European Bronze Age cultures such as the Cretan-Minoan with their votive double axes Artifacts influenced them and supplied them with copper and tin.
The oldest ax blades in the New World can be found in the Dalton culture (8500-8000 BC), they were cross-cut and unpolished.
Further developments in axes and hatchets: The stability of the bronze used and the execution of the casting were initially limiting factors. The ax or hatchet blade was therefore relatively wide and attached to the handle at three points by means of a binding or rivets.
The stock problem became acute when improvements in defensive armament made longer and narrower blades necessary, with which one cut less, but rather stabbed. This led to the development of a grommet ax in which the handle was passed through a tubular grommet hole that was poured onto the ax head. Both the spout and the shaft hole tapered from the outside to the inside so that the blade could not come loose when it was cut and fly away. This much more efficient stock technique was evidently accompanied by a considerable improvement in the originally soft bronze alloy . The spread of this improvement, however, varied greatly in time and space. Sumerian blacksmiths, for example, already ruled them around 2500 BC. BC, while a thousand years later there were only simple mortise axes in Egypt. However, there are apparently prototypes of metal grommet axes in Mesopotamia as early as the Obed period before 5000 BC. BC, as found clay models from Uqair confirm, and towards the end of the period the metalworking is definitely documented. Hollow shaft axes such as those found in Hungary from the early Bronze Age are likely to have been used primarily as weapons. The two-part mold was cast with a clay core for the shaft hole, a technique that came to Europe from the Caucasus. Another variant is the so-called neck disc ax.
The bronze double ax or labrys was a purely cult object , especially in the Cretan-Minoan culture . Such double axes, also as objects of daily use, exist among others among the Celts and in Scandinavia. The interpretation of their cultic symbolism is controversial.
Spear and lance
Bronze spearheads came into use with the development of ever harder alloys, as did objects from the parallel early Iron Age. In this regard, among the oldest European pieces are the iron spears , which were discovered in Etruscan tombs near Bologna in 1853 . They date from the 9th to 10th centuries BC. In order to prevent bending when they hit, they gradually received a reinforcing central rib, which is still missing in the early tips of the copper-bronze period in Harappa, for example . In northern Thailand in the village of Ban Chiang around 2000 BC In addition to bronze spearheads, there was even a bimetallic spearhead with the tip made of iron, the shaft tongue, however, made of bronze, so that iron processing apparently started earlier here than in China, because corresponding melting pots were also found. The same applies to sites such as Dong Son in North Vietnam. The scarfing technique of the Ban Chiang culture and the older Ban Kao culture initially largely follows the traditional methods of spears with flint tips. Lances had longer shafts and larger tips. The shafts were often made of bamboo, the tips initially of bone. They often have a shaft tongue, as well as small protrusions on the sides that prevent the point from being driven into the shaft on impact.
There were basically two methods of stocking: either the tip had a socket at the end into which the shaft was inserted, or the shaft encircled the tip. For the second variant, there were two sub-variants: a differently shaped pointed spinous process that was stuck in the shaft or the tip was guided into a recess in the shaft. Both the spout and the variants where the shaft encompassed the tip were held in place with rivets. These shafting methods, which were also used in a similar way for knives and daggers, were retained during the Iron Age, and far later into the Middle Ages, until spears and lances gradually went out of fashion in the 16th century after the introduction of the arquebus as a firearm .
Bronze, mostly relatively short cast spout tips of lances can be found in Central Europe and in Greece of the Mycenaean period, but also as a commodity, for example in the Terramare culture of the Po Valley and in Scandinavia. However, lance tips were used during the early Bronze Age, especially in the eastern Mediterranean, as they were difficult to stock. They are often found in graves and hoards because of their relative preciousness.
In the Young Bronze Age, the necessary casting techniques improved considerably, as found forms show, and forging techniques began to develop. In addition, the material iron began to spread, not least because of the very warlike situation in this phase, especially during the urn field culture .
Knives, daggers and swords
While the dagger can be traced back to the Stone Age, where it evolved from the flint knife , the sword is an invention of the Bronze Age and required more advanced casting techniques. From around 1500 BC The ax had gradually developed into the curved sickle sword. Above all knives, daggers and swords as well as lance tips are documented by grave and hoard finds. Their manufacture and stocking can also be traced through the numerous found molds.
Daggers: In contrast to the common knife with a shanked blade, such as that found with riveted metal and wooden handles, some in ring shape, in the Mediterranean, especially during the Mycenaean era , the dagger is usually a double-edged thrusting weapon with a handle. The first metal dagger made of copper (later also made of bronze) is documented in Central Europe for the end-Neolithic bell beaker culture , a simple triangular blade with a short tongue extension for attaching a handle, a scarfing technique that was soon abandoned. Characteristic of the Bronze Age daggers, such as the Oder-Elbe dagger , is their two-part design: the blade and handle were manufactured separately and then joined together by a rivet connection, later also using a casting technique. In the megalithic culture, the handles are mostly still made of perishable material, later they are made of metal; and objects of this kind are then called full-grip daggers, where the grip casting makes very high demands ( lost wax process with hollow grip with clay core). There were solid, hollow, spout and double-shell handles. Occasionally the handle was poured onto the blade and not riveted to it. It is unclear whether the triangular daggers were used as an effective weapon or just as a knife. Especially in the Aunjetitz culture, in which the dagger was the most important weapon, it was given a solid metal handle that was connected to the blade by overlay casting . Such a blade could also be used as a dagger by attaching it to a long shaft with rivets at right angles, so that the whole thing became a halberd .
Swords: Towards the end of the Bronze Age, the sword developed in the Middle Bronze Age in the eastern Alpine region gradually replaced the dagger as a weapon, and it was not used again until the Iron Age. In the case of swords, too, a distinction is now made between those with a perishable handle, for example made of wood, horn or bone; They were widespread and barbed, possibly riveted, all over Europe as hilted swords. Full-hilt swords, on the other hand, had metal handles. It was cast using the lost wax technique, where only grommet handles were made. Accordingly, there is a large variety of shapes, some of which can be culturally assigned, including casting techniques, such as the Slovak swords of the Apa type . Most of the handles were connected to the blade by two rivets. In some cases swords ( Auvernier type ) were made in overlay casting and attached directly to the blade. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, swords with bronze handles and iron blades appear in Central Europe. It seems that not only the functionality is important, but also the appearance, especially since grip plates made of organic material were riveted to metal handles for practical reasons, such as the so-called Rosnoën sword.
bow and arrow
When ammunition was consumed in large quantities against the background of the warlike Young Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age, arrowheads had to be cheap to manufacture. Correspondingly, they lagged behind other weapons and devices in terms of technology, and arrowheads made from flint or obsidian cuts were standard well into the Bronze Age, as were the long-proven Stone Age stocks. Bronze arrowheads, on the other hand, survived well into the Iron Age. With them it was then also worthwhile to recover them at the end. There were bronze arrowheads with spout and tongue shafts. The bell-beaker people now increasingly find bow equipment with flint arrowheads that were barbed. The stock methods remain conventional and continue the traditions of corded ceramics.
Full-grip bronze swords from Nebra (accompanying finds of the sky disc ), around 1600 BC Chr.
Iron age
Central European Iron Age | |
---|---|
Hallstatt period | |
Ha C | 800-620 BC Chr. |
Ha D1-D3 | 620-450 BC Chr. |
La Tène time | |
LT A | 450-380 BC Chr. |
LT B | 380-250 BC Chr. |
LT C | 250-150 BC Chr. |
LT D | 150-15 BC Chr./ 0 |
Concept and beginnings in Europe
The beginning of iron smelting and processing belongs to the prehistory in Central and Northern Europe because there was still no written record. In contrast, some ancient high cultures such as the Old Kingdom in Egypt had a written culture as early as the Bronze Age. The Iron Age began in Greece around 1000 BC. BC, in Central and Eastern Europe three centuries later. The iron long swords, spears and battle axes were only introduced between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. In Central Europe (see Hallstatt Period ).
The use of iron in Europe is often seen as an archaeological turning point. However, it took a long time for iron to become an everyday commodity. While bronze requires a predominantly cast and alloy-based technique, iron production depends on forging . Iron gradually replaced bronze, first in weapons, later also in other equipment, for example sickles, wheels, harness and plowshares. Nails are made of iron from the early Roman period certainly detectable (wooden nails are much older). The bronze was now assigned the role of decorative material, cheaper than silver and gold.
Expansion and perfecting
The spread of iron technology was accompanied by a progressive perfecting of the technology. Knowledge of iron processing, like its products, spread through many trade routes across Europe, with four main mechanisms at work:
- Assimilatory influences of ancient empires and cultures. At the edges of these, new technologies diffuse into neighboring cultures. Example: the Scythian influence when the Thracians took over iron technology .
- Import of the new technology on trade routes. The expansion of the Etruscans, Phoenicians and Greeks in the Mediterranean area meant that the peoples of Central Europe, especially the Celts, came under the influence of iron technology, which was already established in the Mediterranean area. Iron processing is from about 700 BC. It is documented in princely graves from the Hallstatt period and has now been increasingly copied. New trade routes emerged in the south and west of Central Europe.
- With the expansion of the Celts , iron processing became more widespread. At the beginning of the Iron Age, the Germanic tribes of the Jastorf culture immigrated from the north and took over the technology from the Celts in the 5th century.
- Equestrian peoples from the southern Russian steppes immigrated from the east and adopted the technology from the Greeks. In return, the horse was used as a riding and draft animal in Europe.
The iron products of the different peoples differ mainly in the design forms, but hardly in the technological concepts. These were based on the purpose. Shaft tongues, for example, had to be more stable on long guns and were often stabilized by rivets, while sleeve shafts were used for daggers and shaft spikes for small points. The iron long swords, spears and battle axes and the bronze objects at the same time were now used in any case together with the metallurgical shafting techniques between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. In a large part of old Europe taken over by the peoples there.
Metal goods were valuable commodities and therefore also a status symbol. The training of local elites led to ever more splendid princely graves with rich weapons of war. There were plentiful iron ore deposits in Central Europe, and the ore has now been melted. The tin deposits required for bronze, however, were rare.
New technologies such as damascene into steel emerged . The stock technique no longer posed any problems and was fully mastered in numerous casting variants. Craftsmanship increased with experience, as demonstrated by the example of the Kirkburn sword, which used various alloys. Decorative purposes could now also be fulfilled better. Figurative art emerged and numerous local styles developed. The blacksmith's profession became very important and was mythologically exaggerated by worshiping the gods of blacksmithing.
Iberian triangular full-grip dagger made of iron and silver with antenna grip. From Almedinilla ( Cordoba ), 4th – 2nd centuries Century BC Chr.
Iron sword of the Miraveche type with a long shaft tongue. Valladolid Province , Spain, 4th century BC Chr.
Iron Iberian spearhead with a socket from the necropolis of Almedinilla (Córdoba), 4th or 3rd century BC Chr.
Overview of the non-European area
To delimit prehistory
It is difficult to assess the relationship between archaeological findings from prehistory and today's ethnological findings.
The transition to the Neolithic has not yet been partially clarified , even in the core area of the Fertile Crescent . The same applies all the more z. B. for the Amazon basin, Ethiopia or parts of Oceania as well as for parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where the transition to the metal age is still often unclear. It is also controversial where there was an independent Neolithization and where the Neolithization was based on contacts and cultural expansion.
Ethnic groups living in the Stone Age still exist today. Therefore, ethnography can provide important food for thought when interpreting archaeological findings. The same or similar solutions based on the same basic techniques can be found worldwide for the stock. Differences mainly depend on the presence of certain materials and on whether the culture is Stone Age or Metal Age. There is also some variation in the shapes of the objects as well as the binders.
Africa
See also: Ethnic Groups of Africa and History of North Africa
Basic cultural and historical features
Especially in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan countries, the prehistoric situation is partly ethnological to this day . There are features similar to those found in other regions of the world, whose transition to the modern Iron Age, as far as it was not carried out during the Bantu expansion, also took place in the course of colonization by leaps and bounds from Stone Age levels, so that most of them of the ethnic groups of Africa today must be viewed and classified as Iron Age, even if Stone Age economic and cultural forms often still exist in them.
Even the Bushmen who are considered to be particularly archaic and who still hunt and collect as hunters (best known the ! Kung ) - there was never a Neolithic here, as in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa - mainly use wood and leather for tools and weapons However, stone tools are only used to a small extent, at most arrowhead parts made of bone, in order to produce the composite arrowheads described above, for which a continuum of at least 4000 years can be proven and thus evidence of a long constancy of the Bushman culture. It is true that metal that is bought from the neighboring Bantu and roughly reforged or broken glass is used for such purposes , but the shafting techniques are still the old ones, provided that, as with arrows, is actually handled.
However, for South Africa , especially Namibia with the Wilton complex , there are clear indications of an extensive microlithic industry from 8000 BP, which point to the beginning of a mesolithic south of the Sahara, whereby microliths presuppose the existence of developed scarfing methods; The existence of bone tips and shafts also points in this direction, as do some processing features of macrolithic inventories.
The settlement history of the Central African rainforest is particularly complex , as there are almost no lithic finds here and, above all, ceramics serve as the guiding paradigm for the classification. A pronounced Stone Age settlement of the area, especially the inner Zaire basin, is however extremely unlikely. Rather, the settlement apparently originating from the west-central African rainforest seems to have been the result of the Bantu expansion and thus of an early Iron Age character and began around 2500 years ago with a transition from hunting to the Neolithic economy, especially along the rivers of the Congo system . This means that the cultural and technological characteristics of the region's population are largely identical to those of the Bantus.
The harpoon finds from Katanda on the Semliki River north of Edward Lake near Ishango in the easternmost corner of the Congo Republic represent a certain special case , for whose inventories corresponding to the Middle Paleolithic Lupemban from the device typology an indirectly derived age between 170,000 and 80,000 years is assumed, but accompanied by the fact that finely crafted, barbed and separately sharpened harpoon tips made of bone were found in the inventory of equipment there , the development of which would therefore have to start much earlier than that of the European harpoons with a soluble shaft tip, whose age is with it was determined no more than 15,000 years ago. The development of standardized bone tools, which can only be detected in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic (from approx. 38,000 BP), would also have to be redefined. The chronological classification of these so-called katanda harpoons is currently the subject of scientific controversy.
For the area of the stock technology there, there are necessarily analogous patterns that are dependent on the respective economic and environmental conditions and are present worldwide, as they exist with other recent ethnic groups in Africa with Neolithic and / or wild-hunting bases.
Bronze age
Outside the area of ancient Egyptian rule, there is only direct evidence of an early metal age in the Maghreb and Mauritania . For Morocco and Tunisia, relations to the Bronze Age are assumed in Spain and southern Italy and Sardinia. Presumably, since they were pre-Phoenician, they were carried by the Berber culture. Rock art in the Atlas Mountains and finds of bronze weapons confirm this assumption. It seems even earlier around 2000 BC. To have given contacts to the Iberian Peninsula, as evidenced by findings of the bell-cup culture in Morocco and western Algeria. For the Central Sahara, rock art also shows references to the Bronze Age. Due to the complete lack of a script, these cultural areas are to be regarded as prehistoric, as the pre-form of the Tuareg script , the Proto- Tifinagh , was only in use between the 3rd and 3rd centuries AD, while the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic script after the introduction of the Christianity completely disappeared up to the 4th AD, even in the late form of the demotic .
Iron age
Iron Age cultural forms overlay late Stone Age groups in many areas. The fully Neolithic, Copper and Bronze Age stages of Europe are “skipped”, as it were, since iron technology was introduced directly through the Bantu expansion (approx. 1500 BC to 1000 AD) or even later by the Arab and European colonizers. On the other hand, it is still unclear why, for example, the Nok culture in Nigeria was already familiar with iron production in the last centuries before Christ, connections with the Bantu expansion, whose core area was in Nigeria, are being discussed.
Weapon types: Eingedornte iron spearheads came as products of a regional sophisticated Blacksmithing until the last century as a commodity in a number of ethnic groups in Africa before and not distinguished by their scarf joint, but by size and shape, such as the Zulu , the Nguni and the Jaga of Zambezi - Angola Province. The Maasai prefer spears with spear shanks and long blades with spear shoes (a spout at the lower end of the shaft that prevents them from splintering).
The planter peoples of the western North Congo prefer a spear with a cross-cutting spout blade. The jungle pygmies, on the other hand , still use partly to this day (e.g. the pygmies of the Ituri forest ) hardened in fire, non-shanked poisoned wooden arrows or arrows with iron blades in spout shafts, but also, but only for elephant hunting, spears with heavy iron tips with spout shafts is also tied and sealed with resin. Lighter spears sometimes have only one slotted shaft. The iron tips are traded, not self-made. The Hausa and Fulbe used small thorned arrows as hunting weapons, mostly poisoned. The Senufo and other ethnic groups in Upper Volta and Togo have arrows with thorn iron tips.
From the Sahel to the north, the devices and weapons of the North African ethnic groups are strongly committed to the historical Iron Age traditions, such as those brought by Islam, the Berbers , Moors and Arabs. The nomadic Baele and Daza carry in their classic features now swords, lances and bracelet dagger, as did the Tuareg .
Especially in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia , numerous smaller, still quite archaic ethnic groups have survived , which are summarized as Surma-Mekan and among which the Mursi are particularly known because of the women's cup lips . But here too, modern weapons up to and including Kalashnikovs are gradually replacing the old Stone Age and Iron Age.
Work tools: Generally everywhere in sub-Saharan Africa where fields or horticulture are practiced, hoes with a thorn blade are sometimes used to this day (cross axes, the term in ethnology is purely functional and not based on the material as in archeology) Iron or wood is used, for example in equatorial East Africa, with different blade designs, depending on whether they are used in the fields or to fell trees. In central Sudan can be found, as with all nations that hoe run, Geradhacken with Dornschäftung or knee pickaxes with mandrel or Tüllenschäftung often side by side, to the south knee pickaxes with aufgebundenem sheet, partly gedornt, likewise in the Semibantu in Cameroon grasslands and z. B. in Senegal with the Wolof and Lebu , here even in Senegal as a straight-handled hoe with an iron spout blade. The Senufo in Upper Volta, on the other hand, use clamp-type iron disks, which now replace the earlier wooden hoes.
The oasis farmers of the Saharan Daza mainly use the scimitar-handled pickaxe.
Outside the Islamic sphere of influence and the Bantu expansion, the Stone Age lasted in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly as the Neolithic, but also still in a Paleolithic form, until the 19th century, with some isolated ethnic groups even into the 20th and 21st. Century.
Asia
Compared to the Near Eastern-Mediterranean and old European world, Asia showed some special developments in the area of the stocks, such as the partly pre-formed lacing of the Chinese ceremonial axes and ax daggers. Its prehistoric and protohistoric phases will therefore be presented here, as they represent independent developments outside of the classical western one.
Because of the extraordinarily large heterogeneity of the great continent, one usually roughly divides into East, South, North, West and Central Asia. For the last two, however, it is true that they were either part of the Mediterranean-Old European cultural spectrum or, especially as far as the steppe peoples of Central Asia are concerned, were very closely connected either with the same cultural area or with the East Asian, and here and there as a mediator of Cultural techniques functioned or even developed, because the domestication of horses and camels, for example, originated in this region. A further complicating factor is that they are peoples without writing, whose archaeological access is still very sketchy, if one disregards the Kurgan for example . In any case, the stock technology of these nomads does not differ from that of the surrounding writing peoples, apart from the special splendor of the weapons in the barrows.
East asia
In China , the Neolithic ended with its Yangshao , Longshan and Xiaotun cultures , which are mainly defined by their ceramics and whose shaft technologies, as excavations show, did not differ in principle from those that were customary in such a cultural phase, i.e. lances and spears, hoes and bindings Hatchets or dechs.
Obviously independently, bronze casting developed there , namely since the Shang dynasty (1700–1025 BC), i.e. from the 18th century BC, with the rise of which the Chinese prehistory ended, that is, in about half a millennium to Central Europe. It was used for the manufacture of weapons and mostly ritual vessels and implements such as the broad ceremonial ax ( yue ) from the late Shang dynasty, the type of which goes back to narrow Neolithic stone axes fu , and was attached to the shaft via a shaft pin at the upper end and through two slits in between through which leather straps were pulled. Such valuable objects were initially reserved for the rising aristocratic class and quickly reached a high level of perfection, including the stock. A good example of this is the Chinese special type of dagger-ax ge about the Shang and Zhou dynasties ; the blade was attached to the end of a long shaft, usually with cords, and served like a hoe to strike. This later developed into the halberd. The dagger axes qi of the eastern Zhou dynasty at the time of the Warring States , which have a T-shaped mortise in the upper part , show that such relics of the shaft were also retained on the cast implements, where they no longer made sense and were used for decoration the weapon proves that it was originally fitted into a wooden shaft, as well as two holes through which the leather straps were pulled.
Since at this time the writing on oracle bones was already known from around the 13th to 11th centuries , which was then fully developed in the second half of the Shang dynasty, marketable during the middle of the first millennium BC and standardized during the Qin dynasty one has to define this period as prehistoric, which then culminated in historicity in the late phase, but at the latest towards the end of the Zhou dynasty.
In the outskirts of China , for example in Tibet and Mongolia , individual ethnic groups have sporadically survived, which, like the Ainu in northern Japan, may have preserved remnants of old technologies. There were contacts to the ethnically related equestrian peoples of the Central Asian and Eastern European steppe regions through which a technology transfer in both directions was possible.
Japan and Korea: In Japan , such technologies were still common in the Jōmon period and the Yayoi period up to the Kofun period , before Buddhism also came to Japan in the 4th and 5th centuries. Correspondingly, in the Yayoi period there are shoped stone sickles and hoes as well as bronzes from Korea.
However , the Yayoi farmers also brought iron implements from Korea . Stone knives and stone axes were also common. From the 1st century AD onwards, bronze weapons such as halberds, swords and javelins were also found, all of which were stocked devices that were initially imported from neighboring countries and became larger and more elaborate with the perfection of melting technology, a development similar to that in Europe.
Bronze spearhead of the Shang dynasty , spout with two side shaft eyelets
Square spout ax with a hunting scene as an ornament, Dong Son culture (South China and Vietnam), from 500 BC Chr.
Bronze sword with angeschmiedetem handle, China, the time of the Warring States Period (475-221. Chr.)
Japanese bronze sword with sleeve shaft, Yayoi period
Yayoi stone knife from the Hokura shrine , which was attached to a wooden shaft via two holes
Korean daggers with spout shafts. Early Iron Age, around 400 BC Chr. ( Old Choson )
North asia
The often still nomadic ethnic groups of North Asia, especially in Siberia and Northern Finland, have in some cases still received cultural techniques from the so-called Circumpolar Stone Age , even if they now also use metal (and firearms) for blades and no longer stone tools such as sharpened axes or hatchets , Hoes, spearheads, harpoons, clubs, etc. The common stock methods are used. The materials are based on the ecological environment and are similar to those of the Eskimos, so reindeer and seal bones as well as whale and walrus bones were used in addition to wood, which is rather rare in the northern regions.
The oldest tools of the seeds were embedded microliths, for example as arrowheads with a straight base. From the 1st century AD they were familiar with bronze and iron including casting processes. Together with the Eskimos and the Aleutians they formed the Arctic small tool tradition , which developed over 2000 years in Alaska, Greenland, Canada and Siberia. In addition to biological materials, slate is also used. The harpoon tips, which are usually forked like a barb or provided with several barbs, usually contain a hole at the base into which a cord is inserted. Similar techniques can be found all over the world, for example in Oceania, where it was important to retrieve a point thrown here with the help of a throwing board together with the prey adhering to it or even just the point after a miss. The Aleutian adze-like stone ax was handled on top and can hardly be distinguished from an analogous product from the European Stone Age.
South and Southeast Asia
In South Asia, as in Africa and South America, there are also a number of ethnic groups that have preserved Stone Age techniques. In India they are summarized as Adivasi , who mostly still live as hunters and gatherers or at best from clearing agriculture. The Adivasi include peoples, albeit often quite different in their details, such as the Chenchu in Andhra Pradesh or the Aranadan in Kerala , as well as the Birhor .
The developments of prehistoric and early historical India are to be seen in connection with the situation of the Mediterranean area and the Middle East, with which already then there were close trade contacts from the Indus culture. There were hardly any weapons to be found in these still strongly egalitarian societies, as archeologically presented in Harappa , Mohenjo Daro and Mehrgarh .
In the Malay Archipelago and the islands of South Asia, which are characterized by a great heterogeneity of languages and cultures, some isolated ethnic groups still live on the edge of civilization, which are often referred to as "forest cultures". Examples are the Kubu and Batak on Sumatra and the Dusun belonging to the Dayak on Borneo . Several small ethnic groups, known as the Orang Asli and mainly including the so-called Negritos , can be found on many Southeast Asian islands. They include the indigenous people of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands , the Veddas on Ceylon and the Igorot in the Philippines . These ethnic groups have mostly preserved Neolithic techniques, sometimes also Paleolithic.
A piece of bone from the Matja Kuru 2 cave in East Timor , which was used to attach the harpoon point to the wooden shaft and fasten it with straps, is 35,000 years old . It is the oldest relic of the intricate connection technology that is common throughout Australia and Melanesia .
In back India , too, there are various isolated ethnic groups, such as the Semang and Senoi on the Malay Peninsula , who have still received parts of the old technologies. However, this area plays a special role in the development of metal technology. The spread of bronze and iron in the Southeast Asian island world apparently began shortly after 1000 BC. From approx. 500 BC. On the 4th century BC, bronze artifacts in the so-called Dong-son style spread far over Indonesia, as found, richly decorated spout hatchets show, and they even reached the coasts of New Guinea.
For northern Thailand , at the Ban Chiang site, around 2000 BC. In addition to bronze spear axes, a bimetallic spearhead has already been proven, with the tip made of iron, while the shaft tongue is made of bronze. That would mean that iron processing apparently started earlier here than in China and possibly reached China from back India.
America
North America
The North American Indian cultures before Columbus resemble the situation in Africa in the cultural and economic heterogeneity of their inventories and range from Paleolithic to Neolithic to cultural zones in the south on the edge of the Central American cultures, such as the Mississippi culture , and the Pueblo, which can be called almost highly cultural -Cultures like that of the Anasazi or Navajo , who adopted the sedentary way of life in contrast to the neighboring Apaches who continued to hunt bison.
In principle, many signs of a stock technique can be found during the North American hunter-gatherer period up to the beginning of the settlement at the beginning of the Holocene, especially of the southern tribes along the great river courses around 8000 BC. BC, where about the Iroquois became corn farmers. It is similar to that of Stone Age South America and is clear from the Folsom and Clovis cultures based on the design of the tips, even if it sometimes prefers different technical solutions, as can also be observed in Africa, for example. Only the tulle shaft seems rather rare. The Aleutian stone hatchet is somewhat similar to European and African models.
The Eskimos make sometimes ago until today geschäftete devices from whalebone or bone. Their oldest technology already preferred this material, in which the tips were either provided with a shaft spike or had a split base for a clamp shaft, occasionally with a hole for the passage of a cord, as in the Dorset culture and the harpoon tips of other circumpolar peoples which the point could be withdrawn, similar to the fishing hooks of Polynesia. A special case is the Ulu knife of the Eskimos, which was used by women to scrape skins and which was used as early as 3000 BC. At the Kodiak when bone implements were replaced by slate ones. It is found almost identically in China.
In North America, copper was only worked in the pure metal form by cold hammering and annealing; Melting and pouring has always remained unknown, in contrast to the South American Andean cultures. It is disputed whether the objects produced in this way were objects of daily use or whether, for example, the jade axes of Western and Southeastern Europe, the early old European cultures or the Mesoamerican high cultures were only used for representative purposes or for trade (they were mainly found as grave goods). At the Upper Lake there is already 3500 BC The so-called Old Copper Complex of Wisconsin with a multitude of devices, including cross-shoved knives, projectile points, some with stems, ax blades, harpoon points with spout attachment and spout ax blades. However, this technology remained isolated in North America. However, these products were exported all over the east through an extensive network of trade links. Between 800 and 1600 AD, the Mississippi culture also saw more advanced copper processing, in which the metal was heated to make it more pliable, but for purely decorative purposes (figurative plates).
The legendary tomahawk of the Comanches , who were also known for their particularly meticulous weapon production, was by no means a weapon at first, but originally a stone ax for cutting trees, as the Algonquin name suggests, which means "to cut". Rather, they fought with a battle club with a stone blade embedded in the front, similar to the weapon used by the Central American peoples. The name was then transferred to the European steel ax. On the other hand, the Indian cultures of the northwest coast, such as the Tlingit or Eyak , used unused stone hammers, so-called stone mauls , in addition to tools that are highly specialized for woodworking, such as the elbow ax , in which the blade is horizontal to the angled handle, so that they are better used for smoothing the wood how it is needed for boat building. Belonging to the Coast Salish peoples belonging Cowichan had polished cone-shaped stone hammers with Schäftungsdorn.
Geschäftete boat hook the Eskimos, including various paddle
Spearhead and knife of the Anasazi Indians , 6th – 14th centuries Century. Mesa Verde National Park .
Middle and South America
The first Paleo-Indian immigrants to South America established around 9000/8000 BC. The spearheads, which are also familiar elsewhere, here in the so-called fishtail style , which make a scarf mandatory, here probably as a binding scarf, while other tip shapes such as El Jobo , Paiján or Ayampitin-Luricocha leaf tips required other scarf shapes and the fishtail tips there are the only ones with fluting.
The pre-Columbian cultures of Central and South America and the Caribbean, on the other hand, are a special case.
In Central America and its advanced civilizations, there was little or no real metal age in the sense of metal for tools and weapons before Columbus, because only precious metals and copper have been proven there since 1500 BC. Used (gold sheets), which are rather unsuitable for this purpose because they are relatively soft, and only the Incas developed bronze. The script did exist in the Mesoamerican cultures (but not in Peru, with the exception of the knotted script Quipu ). The peoples of Central America mainly use obsidian and other types of mineral and stone suitable for this purpose in order to produce sharp points and blades, which were then shanked , also on the sides, such as the so - called macuahuitl called obsidian clubs , or the macanas that developed from them and also represent a mixture of club and sword, which is here at the end. Incidentally, obsidian was also used in New Zealand for the manufacture of sharp weapons. Jade, on the other hand, was reserved for ceremonial implements because of its relative softness, as in other cultures around the world between Europe and China.
Stone axes were already widespread in the Olmec culture as valuable tools at a time when no metals were processed. In addition to axes for practical use, they have also been made for ritual purposes, and entire depots of them have been found, for example in La Venta , 258 in one of them. It is believed that they were used as offerings. They were mostly made of serpentine , but some were made of the harder jadeite .
Another typical weapon of all Central American cultures was the atlatl , a spear thrower . The technically very complex device with channel, eyelet and retaining pin for the spear to be inserted as well as brackets made of mussel shells at the lower end of the approx. 60 cm long weapon was often richly carved. There were also simple throw boards like those of the Eskimos . They were used for bird hunting.
The Aztecs' often very long (up to 40 cm) flint knives are mostly preserved in sacrificial depots and at one end were sometimes designed like a saw. Because of the sharp edge all around, they must have been sheathed at the narrow ends. The wooden handles, often richly decorated with jadeite, shell and turquoise plates, show that such handles existed.
In South America, on the other hand, metalworking was at a high level in the pre-Inca Mochica culture, and forging, driving, casting and soldering were mastered. And the Incas themselves had tools and weapons, such as a five-pointed bronze battle ax cast in one piece. The residents of Tiahuanaco also knew how to work metal.
In Mesoamerica, however, the application of the new metalworking processes developed in the Andean region was mostly limited to jewelry. The bronze developed in the Andean region never appears here.
Sold tools and weapons are still manufactured and used in some isolated ethnic groups in South America, for example in the Amazon region. However, the material culture of these groups is rather simple and is based primarily on the use of the rivers and the forest, i.e. fishing gear, partly unused bows and arrows and the blowpipe. Stone tools are rare, the most common being the polished ax head.
The inhabitants of the Caribbean who have lived there since the 5th millennium and were later almost exterminated by the Europeans, in turn, only developed more sophisticated stone tools at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, which then also have sharpening features such as sharpening thorns or clamping shafts, such as finds from the Cowrie culture of the great Antilles show, and it wasn't until the turn of the ages that Neolithic techniques came into play there through the Saladoid culture and other local cultural groups.
The Australian-Pacific region
overview
As evidenced by its linguistic diversity, the greater Australian-Pacific region is not a culturally homogeneous area, see Australian languages and oceanic languages . The number of languages is particularly high in New Guinea, see Papuan languages . One can best speak of tool traditions, some of which are still carried on today. The manufacturing techniques show parallels to the Palaeolithic of Southeast Asia, from where settlement may have started.
In the oldest places of discovery, hewn stone axes appear next to hoes with curved stone blades, which were fairly securely worked. In New Guinea they were already sharpened, similarly in Australia. A common blade material is obsidian, which was mined underground on the Admiralty Islands and traded over long distances. The handles are made of wood and fastened with putty, often richly decorated. The Aboriginal people have three-pronged fishing spears, etc.
Archaic tools are still in use today by the Aborigines and Papuans and have the classic shaft shapes: wooden handle with adhesive, binding and hole shafts. Stone axes, for example, come in countless sizes and variants. In some cases, highly complex manufacturing processes resulted in devices such as the Kodj ax or the Kartan ax heads . These were in themselves a product made of pebbles, which were clumped with resin obtained from spiked grass seeds, which was also important for the rest of the tool production, which among the Aborigines never went beyond the status of stone tools.
Oceania
In Oceania, writing and metal are only used by Malay, Japanese and Chinese traders as well as with the European colonization, if one disregards the special script of Easter Island (see Rongorongo ). Oceania in the narrower sense includes Polynesia , Melanesia and Micronesia , but not New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand.
The main materials used to make tools were wood, stone, plant fiber, shells and bones. Corals and sea urchins were also used. Fish hooks, harpoons and even paddles were often used. In Melanesia and Polynesia, however, the basic tools remained ax and hatchet with a stone blade. Stone grinding and Neolithic agricultural techniques were only developed in a very isolated manner in Oceania.
Most of the obsidian spearheads ( mata'a ) of Easter Island were stalked. They were wrapped with rush thread and attached to a shaft. Two small pieces of wood were inserted on each side for wedging.
New Guinea
New Guinea was settled around 50,000 years ago. Stone Age techniques are particularly well preserved here in some of the Melanesian Papuan ethnic groups. 3000 years ago the natives of the north-western part were confronted for the first time by Southeast Asian seafarers with influences from the Metal Age, without this having left any significant cultural traces. A lively exchange with Indonesia began 1000 years ago through spice traders. Ethnic groups with a Stone Age repertoire, who today often use metal blades, are the Dani , Yali , Mek, Asmat , who live in the Indonesian West Papua , the forest nomads of the Korowai who live in tree houses and especially the inhabitants of the island of Waigeo and mountain pygmies, as well as the inhabitants of the Sepik area .
They all use spears, lances, bows and arrows, cross hatchets, mostly with binding shafts and additionally in perforated shafts and glued. War clubs often fulfill ceremonial functions or demonstrate the status of chief; they are then decorated accordingly, often with a nephrite disc as a blade. Arrows often only have a wooden or bamboo tip, spears have a socket shaft with a large metal blade tip. The Sepik tribes mainly live from hunting and horticulture and have a pronounced ornamental culture. Their spears are sometimes up to three meters long and made as a whole and artistically carved. The binding and glued wooden points sometimes have numerous barbs or are designed as multiple points.
Only the Asmat are exclusively hunters and gatherers. Tools and weapons of the other ethnic groups, all of whom belong to the Papuans of the Indonesian West New Guinea Irian Jaya, are oriented towards hunting, chopping and fishing. However, the archaeological discovery of New Guinea is still in the early stages.
Australia and New Zealand
The Aborigines of Australia and the Maori of New Zealand brought the techniques of stone processing with them when they immigrated about 40,000 years ago and developed them into a high art. The Aborigines, for example, had finely retouched tips or knife blades with small cuts on the sides with adhesive handles. Large, 20,000-year-old blades with side notches, which also suggest a shaft, were also found in Australia. They are made in a similar way to this day. In the Kenniff Cave in Queensland, the 20,000-year-old depiction of a barbed ax and bony spearheads were discovered. The variety of shapes is enormous for hatchets, axes and clubs. Examples are the Tula hatchet or an edged ax from Puntutjarpa (Southwest Australia), which were dated to 10,000 BP and had wooden shafts. In the Gantja stone knives of the Arrernte of Central Australia, the stone blade was attached to the wooden handle with resin, bark and hair cord .
Literature and Sources
Reference works, atlases
- Lutz Fiedler, Gaëlle Rosendahl, Wilfried Rosendahl: Paleolithic from A to Z. WBG, Darmstadt 2011, ISBN 978-3-534-23050-1 .
- Christine Flon (Ed.): The large picture atlas of archeology. Orbis Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-572-01022-5 .
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- Andrew Sherratt (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology. Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-035-X .
By regions
- Europe, Mediterranean, Middle East
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- Hermann Müller-Karpe : Basics of early human history. Vol. 1: From the beginnings to the 3rd millennium BC Chr. Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1309-7 .
- Ernst Probst : Germany in the Stone Age. Hunters, fishermen and farmers between the North Sea coast and the Alps. Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-570-02669-8 .
- Josef H. Reichholf : Why people settled down. The greatest mystery in our history . 2nd Edition. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-10-062943-2 .
- Helmut Schlichtherle : pile dwellings: the early settlement of the Alpine foothills . In: Spectrum of Science (Ed.): Settlements of the Stone Age , pp. 140–153. Spektrum der Wissenschaft-Verlagsges., Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-922508-48-0 .
- Helmut Schlichtherle : The archaeological find landscape of the Federsee basin and the Forschner settlement. Settlement history, research history and conception of the new investigations. In: Settlement Archeology in the Alpine Foreland XI. The Early and Middle Bronze Age "Researcher Settlement" in the Federseemoor. Findings and dendrochronology. Research Ber. Before u. Mornings Baden-Württemberg 113 (Stuttgart 2009), pp. 9-70. Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-8062-2335-4 .
- Klaus Schmidt: You built the first temple. The enigmatic sanctuary of the Stone Age hunters. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-53500-3 .
- Harry Wüstemann: Daggers and Swords - The armourer and his technique. In: Jockenhövel / Kubach: Bronze Age in Germany , pp. 86–88.
- Africa
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- Jürgen Richter: Studies on the prehistory of Namibia. Heinrich Baarth Institute, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-927688-04-5 .
- Hans-Peter Wotzka: Studies on the archeology of the Central African rainforest. Heinrich Barth Institute, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-927688-07-X .
- America
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- Hans Läng : Cultural history of the Indians of North America. Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach 1993, ISBN 3-8112-1056-4 .
- Jeffrey Quilter: The Treasures of the Andes. The splendor of the Inca period and pre-Columbian South America. Frederking & Thaler Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-89405-497-2 .
- Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum , Hildesheim: Splendor and fall of ancient Mexico. Exhibition 1986. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz, ISBN 3-8053-0908-2 .
- Miloslav Stingl : The Incas. Ancestors of the Sun Sons. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf 1978, ISBN 3-927117-40-4 .
- Asia
- Caroline Blunden, Mark Elvin: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: China. Christian Verlag, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-88472-091-0 .
- Martin Collcutt, Marius Jansen, Isao Kumakura: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Japan. Christian Verlag, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-88472-151-8 .
- Valentina Gorbatcheva, Marina Federova: The peoples of the far north. Art and culture of Siberia. Parkstone Press, New York 2000, ISBN 1-85995-484-7 .
- Gordon Johnson: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: India and Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka. Christian Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-88472-271-9 .
- Kulturstiftung Ruhr , Essen (ed.): Ancient China: People and Gods in the Middle Kingdom 5000 BC Chr . – 220 AD Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-7774-6640-9 .
- Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea and Oceania
- Roland Garve : Irian Jaya. The lost stone age. Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-378-00456-8 .
- Mysterious culture of Easter Island. Treasures from the land of Hotu Matua. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 1993, ISBN 3-89350-723-X .
- Lindenmuseum Stuttgart , South Seas Department. Text Ingrid Heermann. Stuttgart 1989.
- Hermann Mückler : Introduction to the Ethnology of Oceania: Cultural History of Oceania , Volume 1: Cultural History of Oceania 1 . facultas.wuv Universitätsverlag, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3-7089-0392-7 .
- Richard Nile, Christian Clerk: World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. History art life forms. Christian Verlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-88472-291-3 .
Cultural Techniques and Anthropology
- S. Ambrose: Coevolution of composite-tool technology, constructive memory, and language. Implications for the evolution of modern human behavior. Current Anthropology 51 / S1, pp. 135-147 (2010).
- Rudolf Feustel: History of the descent of humans. 6th edition. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1990, ISBN 3-8252-1722-1 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 403 f.
- ↑ Deutschlandfunk : The inventors of the wheel , dated June 2, 2011, loaded on March 4, 2019
-
↑ Feustel, pp. 192–204
Roger Lewin: Traces of the Human Becoming . The evolution of Homo sapiens . Spektrum Akad. Verlag, Heidelberg 1992, ISBN 3-89330-691-9 , pp. 149-152 . - ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 123 f., 330; Müller-Karpe, Paleolithic, p. 38 f.
- ↑ a b Hoffmann, p. 330.
- ↑ To put this interpretation into perspective, see Müller-Karpe, Grundzüge, vol. 1, p. 4 ff.
- ↑ Feustel, pp. 201 f., 227 ff., 238 ff.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 133; Müller-Karpe, Paleolithic, p. 163 f., 192 f .; Clark, Vol. 1, p. 405; Feustel, p. 200 f .; Hahn, pp. 146-148; Herrmann / Mania, pp. 31, 40; Ambrose 2010 ( Commons ).
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 124.
- ^ Hahn, pp. 218, 230, 237.
- ↑ Müller-Beck, p. 338.
- ^ Hahn, p. 242.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 231 .; Probst, p. 60.
- ↑ a b Andrew Sherratt (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology . Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-035-X , p. 90 .
- ↑ a b Hahn, p. 247.
- ↑ Hahn, pp. 11–23, 26 ff.
- ↑ Mückler, p. 261 f.
- ↑ Keefer, pp. 30, 97.
- ^ Probst, p. 61.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 190 f.
- ↑ Müller-Beck, p. 300 f .; Hahn u. a., p. 130 f.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 331.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 204 f.
- ↑ Ambrose 2010.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 67.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 404; Hahn, p. 387 ff., Schlichtherle, p. 33.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 382, 404.
- ↑ Hahn, pp. 387, 389; Keefer, p. 125.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 45, 330 f .; Hahn, pp. 286-294.
- ↑ For typology s. Hahn, p. 286 ff.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 201; Hahn, p. 287.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 113.
- ↑ Cunliffe, 205 f., 209 f., 218; Müller-Beck, p. 439 f.
- ^ Probst, p. 171.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 45 f., Hahn, p. 211 ff., 286–289.
- ↑ Haberland, p. 160.
- ↑ Mückler, p. 31.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 113-116.
- ↑ Sherratt, pp. 144, 158, 325.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 186; Keefer, p. 99.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 137 ff.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 164, 310.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 20, 60, 168, 208, 367; Cunliffe, p. 285.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 60.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 29 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 530 .
- ↑ Mania, Archaeol. i. German, p. 57 f.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 191 f .; Hahn, 296 ff.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 191 f.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 168 f., 334 .; Hahn, p. 292 f .; Probst, pp. 172, 430.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 349 f.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 345 f.
- ↑ Jayne Wilkins et al .: Evidence for Early Hafted Hunting Technology In: Science , November 16, 2012, pp. 942-946.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 213; Hoffmann, p. 231, Hahn u. a., pp. 93, 99.
- ↑ Keefer, p. 30 ff.
- ^ Probst, p. 172.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 149 f .; Fiedler pp. 348-357.
- ↑ Müller-Beck, p. 338; Hahn et al., Pp. 97, 99, 117 ff., 123 ff., 127, 130 f.
- ↑ Hahn, pp. 333–342.
- ↑ Hahn, p. 342.
- ^ Hahn, pp. 198, 207 ff.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 13 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 354 .
- ↑ Hahn, p. 268 f.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 332.
- ↑ Schlichtherle, p. 26.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 307; Cunliffe, p. 116.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 171 f.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 344 f.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 332; Hahn, pp. 277-281.
- ↑ a b Probst, p. 170.
- ^ Sherratt, p. 158.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 86; Sherratt, p. 17 f.
- ↑ See Sherratt, pp. 17 f., 34–37.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 11.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 446, 449 f.
- ^ Scarre, p. 148.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 330; Müller-Karpe, Paleolithic, p. 38.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 49.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 54; Mania, pp. 149, 150, 158, 165; Mania, Arch. I. German P. 67 ff.
- ^ Probst, p. 38.
- ↑ Winfried Henke , Hartmut Rothe : Paläoanthropologie . Springer Verlag, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-540-57455-7 , p. 522 .
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 333.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 49; Cunliffe, pp. 20, 43.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 50.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 334 f .; Clark, Vol. 1, pp. 262 ff .; Cunliffe, pp. 59, 62.
- ↑ Fage, Vol. 2, p. 42.
- ↑ Clark, Vol. 1, p. 432; Hoffmann, pp. 202, 328.
- ↑ Hahn, p. 131 f.
- ↑ Winfried Henke, Hartmut Rothe: Paläoanthropologie . Springer Verlag, Heidelberg 1994, ISBN 3-540-57455-7 , p. 532 .
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 260; Hahn u. a. P. 155.
- ↑ Hahn u. a., p. 155.
- ↑ Müller-Beck, p. 375 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 103-107, 114 ff.
- ↑ Hahn, p. 384 ff.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 116, 146.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 359 f.
- ↑ Hahn, pp. 270, 349-352.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 296 f .; Sherratt, p. 150; Hoffmann, p. 81 f.
- ↑ Hahn, pp. 273-276.
- ^ Probst, p. 414 f .; Hoffmann, p. 82 ff.
- ↑ Hoffmann, pp. 33 f., 58 f.
- ^ Gross-Klee, pp. 69-101.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 206 f .; Hahn, pp. 276-281.
- ↑ Flon, pp. 260, 262.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 224.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 280; Müller-Karpe, Grundzüge, p. 158.
- ↑ Jockenhövel, p. 35
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 358 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 275; Sherratt, pp. 146, 150 f.
- ↑ Schlichtherle, p. 38 f.
- ↑ a b Flon, p. 253.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 351.
- ↑ a b Ingenious craftsmen: edge strips, buttocks or spouts . Landschaftsmuseum.de. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 217 ff., 226, 307, 351.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 367.
- ↑ Hoffmann, p. 168 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 279, 290 f., 294, 307 f.
- ↑ Haberland, p. 114.
- ↑ a b Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 29 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 532 f .
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 115 f.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 296.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 299.
- ↑ Sherratt, pp. 164 f., 172 f .; Scarre, p. 150.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 275, 290, 303, 319 ff., 329 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 350 ff., 369 f.
- ↑ Jockenhövel / Wüstemann, p. 86 ff .; Hoffmann, p. 200 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 290–295, 350 ff. Etc.
- ↑ Jockenhövel / Wüstemann, p. 87 f .; Hoffmann, p. 81 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 320, 329 f.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 285.
- ↑ Jockenhövel, p. 39 f.
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 290.
- ^ Production process of bronze artifacts . praehistorische-archaeologie.de. Retrieved October 26, 2019.
- ↑ Jockenhövel / Wüstemann, p. 88 f.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 320 f., 365, 369.
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 303, academia.eu
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 369.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 29 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 534 .
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 285 f.
- ↑ Data from the timetable in The World of the Celts. Centers of power. Treasures of art. Thorbecke, 2012, ISBN 3799507523 , p. 524 f.
- ↑ a b c Andrew Sherratt (Ed.): The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archeology . Christian Verlag, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-88472-035-X , p. 222 ff .
- ↑ Cunliffe, p. 419 ff.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 14 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 602 .
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 3 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 16 .
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 18 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 590 .
- ^ Cunliffe, p. 423.
- ↑ J. Herrmann / H. Keiling, Vol. 1, p. 152.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 395, 400, 405, 425 ff.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 347-353, 409 ff.
- ↑ See Baumann / Fuchs, Vol. 2, pp. 567, 569 f.
- ↑ See for example Schmidt, pp. 247 f., 254 ff. Or the “Beer Theory” by Reichholf, p. 258 ff.
- ↑ Müller-Karpe, Grundzüge, Vol. 1, p. 157 f.
- ↑ See Sherratt, p. 36 f .; Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 27 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 328 ff .
- ↑ Baumann, Vol. 1, p. 439.
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 177.
- ↑ Baumann / Hirschberg, vol. 1, p. 390 ff.
- ^ Richter, pp. 249-255.
- ↑ Wotzka, pp. 244-257.
- ↑ Wotzka, pp. 282-285.
- ↑ Phillipson, p. 120; Hoffmann, pp. 171, 210 f.
- ↑ Clark, pp. 617, 959.
- ↑ Baumann / Smolla, Vol. 1, p. 37.
- ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia . 19th edition. tape 1 . Mannheim 1994, ISBN 3-7653-1200-2 , pp. 249 .
- ↑ Baumann, / Born, p. 710.
- ↑ Baumann, vol. 1, p. 38 f.
- ↑ Baumann / Kronenberg, Vol. 2., p. 173.
- ↑ Baumann, Vol. 1, pp. 569, 571; Baumann / Born, Vol. 1, p. 708.
- ↑ Baumann / Schebesta, Vol. 1, p. 779.
- ↑ Baumann / Klein, Vol. 2, p. 328.
- ↑ Baumann / Dittmer, Vol. 2, p. 514.
- ↑ Baumann / Dittmer, Vol. 2, p. 514; Baumann / Fuchs, pp. 548, 564.
- ↑ Baumann / Haberland, Vol. 2, pp. 144–149.
- ↑ Baumann / Liesegang et al., Vol. 2, p. 36.
- ↑ Baumann / Klein, Vol. 2, p. 326: Baumann / Hirschberg, Vol. 2, p. 358; Baumann / Zernemann, Vol. 2., p. 436.
- ↑ Blunden, p. 50 f.
- ↑ Kulturstiftung / catalog section, pp. 233–237, 273 f., 311 ff.
- ↑ Blunden, p. 54; Rodzinski, p. 17 f.
- ↑ Brockhaus Encyclopedia . 19th edition. tape 11 . Mannheim 1994, ISBN 3-7653-1200-2 , pp. 112 .
- ↑ Collcutt, pp. 34-42.
- ↑ Gorbatcheva, illustrations pp. 40, 77, 102, 110, 183; Sherratt, p. 320: Scarre, p. 272 f .; Long, pp. 45-49, 65-71.
- ↑ Johnson, pp. 58-62.
- ^ S. O'Connor, G. Robertson, KP Aplin: Are osseous artefacts a window to perishable material culture? Implications of an unusually complex bone tool from the Late Pleistocene of East Timor in Journal of Human Evolution, January 15, 2014, accessed January 23, 2014
- ^ Report on the 35,000 year old harpoon ( memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 23, 2014
- ↑ Sherratt, pp. 272-276.
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 127 f.
- ↑ Sherratt, pp. 164 f., 172 f.
- ↑ Haberland, pp. 146–158, 169.
- ↑ Haberland, p. 49.
- ↑ Flon, p. 329; Haberland, p. 163.
- ↑ Cunliffe, pp. 194, 198.
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 360; Haberland, p. 169 f .; Flon, p. 330.
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 377.
- ↑ Läng, pp. 232 f., 298 ff., Fig. 59
- ↑ Quilter, p. 22; Haberland, p. 154 ff .; Flon, p. 357
- ↑ See Roemer-Pelizaeus, p. Fig. 54 f., P. 70, cat.no.86.
- ↑ Roemer-Pelizaeus, cat.no.3.
- ↑ Cf. Roemer-Pelizaeus, cat.no.273, 274.
- ↑ Cf. Roemer-Pelizaeus, Cat. No. 192–295, 345.
- ↑ Quilter, p. 174.
- ↑ Stingl, pp. 182, 274.
- ↑ Michael D. Coe (Ed.): World Atlas of Ancient Cultures: America before Columbus. History, art forms of life. Christian Verlag, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-88472-107-0 , p. 133, 168 f .
- ↑ Sherratt, p. 398.
- ↑ Fiedler, p. 369 f.
- ^ Lindenmuseum, p. 13.
- ^ Scarre, p. 97.
- ↑ Sherratt, pp. 334, 336, 339; Lindenmuseum Stuttgart, Südseeabt., 1989, p. 36.
- ^ Nile, p. 44.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 25 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 261 .
- ↑ a b Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 25 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 104 .
- ^ Nile, p. 53.
- ^ Easter Island, p. 307.
- ↑ Garve, p. 7
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica . 15th edition. tape 25 . Chicago 1993, ISBN 0-85229-571-5 , pp. 121, 124 .
- ^ Lindenmuseum, p. 105.
- ↑ Garve: Figure documents : S. 38, 74 (Dechsel, stone ax), 102 (dagger with glued bone tip), 95 (Speer with an iron spout tip), (Speer with broad iron blade in Bindeschäftung), 59, 64, 69, 87, 117 , 119 (arrows with and without bandage / adhesive stocks, but often with a long bamboo tip or iron tip).
- ↑ Flon, p. 376.
- ↑ Flon, p. 378 f.
- ↑ Scarre, pp. 69, 97.
- ^ Lindenmuseum, p. 142.