Natural resources – The House Archaeologist

The story of Mesolithic quarries on the western coast of South-Norway

How did people think about stone adzes, the collection of raw material and quarries in Stone Age Norway? Could there be reasons beyond required qualities needed for making certain tools that made people quarry and distribute certain rocks? Can we tell by the volume of exploitation and scale of distribution and use whether stone from some places was considered more valuable than others?

Flint is the most commonly used raw material in many countries, as in Norway. However, there is no flint in Norwegian bedrock. Instead, nodules of flint had been redeposited with the help of ice-water and ice during the Ice Age. When the glaciers melted, ice that had covered areas with flint deposits further south broke loose and floated west and north with flint stuck to them. They stranded at the shores, melted, and made the sloping shores of the Norwegian coast treasure chests for Mesolithic and Neolithic raw material hunters. Hence also the colloquial name “beach flint”.

However, after the first two thousand years of settling along the Norwegian coast, something stirred in these societies. Some researchers suggest that mobile hunter-gatherers did not only move in from the south-east, but now also came from the north-east (e.g. Sørensen et al. 2013; Damlien 2016). This may have caused the apparent changes in tool types and the way one made them. Beach flint was no longer sufficient for making adzes. After 8000 BC, adzes were roughly shaped by knapping, and then ground into their final shape (Figure 1).

Figure 1. An example of the new type of greenstone adze made after 8000 BC in South Norway. (Photo: Astrid J. Nyland).

At this point in time, quarrying began. At first, a few sources were probably exploited repeatedly as a predictable supply of high quality rock. However, as millennia went by it became clear that a few sites must have come to mean more to the people that used them, than simply being sources of rock. An indication of significance beyond pragmatics may be the ‘refusal’ to abandon these quarries, even as the rock deposits were partly submerged by a transgressing sea, making other deposits more accessible.

Over time, the quarries on the western coast of South-Norway developed into the most monumental human-made sites of the Norwegian Stone Age that we know of. These are a diabase quarry at Stakalleneset in Flora, Sogn og Fjordane County (Figure 2), and the Hespriholmen greenstone quarry at Bømlo, Hordaland County (Figure 3).

Figure 2: Left: A massively exploited diabase dike at Stakalleneset, Flora, Sogn og Fjordane County. Right: Blanks, used knapping stones and waste of diabase found at the foot of the quarry. (Photo: Astrid J. Nyland) — Figure 2. Left: A massively exploited diabase dike at Stakalleneset, Flora, Sogn og Fjordane County. Right: Blanks, used knapping stones and waste of diabase found at the foot of the quarry. (Photo: Astrid J. Nyland).

Figure 3: The greenstone quarry Hespriholmen on an islet in the sea outside Bømlo, Hordaland County. (Photo: Astrid J. Nyland) — Figure 3. The greenstone quarry Hespriholmen on an islet in the sea outside Bømlo, Hordaland County. (Photo: Astrid J. Nyland).

These quarries were exploited from around 7500 BC to 2500 BC, and around 400 m³ were extracted. Hence, during more than 4000 years, the hollows and scars in the rock phase and tailing piles grew ever larger. The diabase and greenstone were distributed widely, but each type within a demarcated area that probably defined a social territory (Olsen and Alsaker 1984).

These quarries were not the sole providers of rock for adzes, but the particularities of the exploitation of these sites indicate that they gradually turned into social nodes too. In the Norwegian Stone Age, enduring man-made structures of stone were rare as most things were made of degradable materials. By the end of the Mesolithic, before 4000 BC, the mentioned quarries displayed deep scars and large waste piles that persisted for generations.

In ethnographic books, there are several examples of specific places being bestowed with social or symbolic meaning and power. Places can be related to origin myths or tales of other significant events in a society. In the case of the prehistoric quarries, there might have been value in the mere continuance of the quarrying tradition at a place where one saw solid proof of one’s ancestors endeavours (Nyland 2016a, 2017). Rock associated with these socially significant places would then also have become valued. Perhaps that was one reason for the wide distribution?

Dr. Astrid J. Nyland, Associate Professor, Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Norway. (Nyland has written a PhD (2016) about 21 quarries of various types of rock, located both at the coast and in the mountains, dating to the Stone, Bronze and Early Iron Age in South-Norway. The results that this blog post builds on have been published in several articles accessible from her page at academia.edu).

References

Damlien, H. 2014. Eastern Pioneers in Westernmost Territories? Current perspectives on Mesolithic hunter-gatherer large-scale interaction and migration within Northern Eurasia. Quaternary International. doi: 10.1016/j.quaint.2014.02.023

Nyland, A.J., 2016a. Humans in Motion and Places of Essence. Variations in rock procurement practices in the Stone, Bronze and Early Iron Ages in southern Norway. Unpublished PhD thesis. University of Oslo.

Nyland, A.J., 2017a. Materialized Taskscapes? – Mesolithic lithic procurement in Southern Norway. In: Rajala, U. & Mills, P. (eds.) Forms of Dwelling; 20 Years of Taskscapes in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow books, pp. 125–150.

Olsen, A. B. and Alsaker, S. 1984. Greenstone and Diabase Utilization in the Stone Age of Western Norway: Technological and socio-cultural aspects of axe and adze production and distribution. Norwegian Archaeological Review 17, 2: 71-103.

Sørensen, M., Rankama, T., Kankaanpää, J., Knutsson, K., Knutsson, H., Melvold, S., Eriksen, B. Valentin and Glørstad, H. 2013. The First Eastern Migrations of People and Knowledge into Scandinavia: Evidence from studies of Mesolithic technology, 9th-8th millenium BC. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 46, 1: 19-56.

The Hunter, The Dog Men, and the House by the Shore: How an archaeologist writes an archaeological novel.

To begin with, I have a wide range of interests, including experimental archaeology which provides a fusion between my environmental knowledge, interests in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology and my fascination in the Prehistoric use of organic materials.

A major recent project for me has been to work on the west coast of Scotland trying to establish how Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were living. I did this by restricting myself to the natural resources and tool kit of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer so that I could I go through similar thought processes and experiences. Using experimental archaeology and bushcraft skills to fill in some of the gaps in the archaeological record, the human facets that are often missing. Making and testing a wide range of fishing gear, travelling thousands of miles over 4 years and starting to feel like a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer; lugging fishing gear to remote sites, planning to maximise the use of tides, and often experiencing awful weather.

These experiences provided me with an insight into the world of the Prehistoric coastal hunter-gatherer, revealing the extent of organisation and knowledge that they must have had in order to fully utilise their environment. The planning needed to maximise returns, whether foraging, hunting or collecting natural resources.

Experimental archaeology is often used to engage public interest in our past, most notably through reconstruction or experiential learning. With a view to further communicating our understanding of the Mesolithic to a wider audience I recently wrote a novel; The Hunter, The Dog Men and the House by the Shore.

I had three objectives in mind.

Firstly, to illustrate what a fascinating and diverse ecosystem we have lost in the UK since the Mesolithic. With over 30 years’ experience in the environmental sector, I have long been aware of the relationship between human activities, however small, and their environmental consequences. The environmental and ecological knowledge required; the places to find the best materials for a particular task, knowledge of seasons and the seasonal movement of species. When and where to be, at a particular place at a particular time of year. My novel takes the reader on a journey through north-west England (what is now Merseyside, Cheshire and North Staffordshire), 8000 years ago, in a landscape where aurochs, elk, wolf, lynx and wild boar roam.

Secondly, to bring to the modern reader an insight into the daily lives of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the food they ate, how they might have cooked it, how they travelled, the tools, the buildings, the boats. The novel is based on the latest archaeological research and is packed full of natural history and bushcraft skills. The main character is a lone Prehistoric hunter who works his way through this diverse and changing landscape. On his travels he encounters a range of characters; from traders to killers and ultimately meets his new mate who lives in a house by the shore.

Thirdly, to demonstrate the extensive skills and knowledge that our ancestors would have employed day in, day out, skills that most people now lack. As an experimental archaeologist I use ancient technologies and bushcraft skills to understand how our ancestors used to live. Some of my projects have included; stone and bone bead making in Romania, tree bast comparisons in Denmark, skin-on-frame boat building, and Neanderthal birch bark tar production. In short, a range of exciting and fascinating projects that have provided me with a genuine insight into the range of skills required by our Prehistoric ancestors.

It is of course very difficult to understand the mind-set of someone who lived 8000 years ago, but by using some of those ancient hunter-gatherer skills together with experimental archaeology, we can move some way toward them.

Peter Groom has a PhD in Mesolithic Archaeology, is a freelance experimental archaeologist and primitive skills/bushcraft practitioner, a founding member of the Mesolithic Resource Group and is the course manager and principal instructor of the Environmental Archaeology and Primitive Skills course at Reaseheath College. He lives in Staffordshire, England.

The novel is available to purchase via Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hunter-Dog-Men-House-Shore/dp/153981971X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478876612&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Hunter%2C+The+Dog+Men+and+the+House+by+the+Shore

Stones and people: how do we determine function?

As you may have understood from this blog, archaeologists do many things outside of The Excavation. One such thing happens after something has been dug. When something is discovered, it often has undefined entities. While you can often tell that something was manipulated by humans, it is rarer to immediately see what the thing in question was for. Most often, finds have to go through a period of analysis to bear meaning, and certainly to be relevant for our understanding of the entire excavation as a whole.

One type of analysis is functional analysis of lithics. Through thousands, and sometimes millions of years, stones have been worked into specific types of tools. But, even if something looks like an axe today, that doesn’t mean that it was in fact an axe thousands of years ago. We therefore carefully investigate each artefact, first to group and label them for magazines, and later to research their actual role in our society. The latter can be achieved by many means, such as residue analysis or placement on a site (for instance in a grave). However, sometimes we want to look at the practical function that a stone tool had, and we often do this through experimental means. One method that is closely linked to experimental archaeology, is use-wear analysis. Through this method, a researcher will scrutinise the tool for worn facets or edges under a microscope, and look at the patterning of the wear. Sometimes it may be criss-cross scratches, sometimes chipped edges, sometimes patches that are worn to the extent that they shine. Often, these traces are not visible to the naked eye, and we use a variety of microscopes to get the best or most detailed view of the pattern. Then, ideally the archaeologists will aim to create a replica pattern, and this is done through experimentation.

For instance, an axe will be investigated along the axe edge to determine whether it was a) used at all, b) heavily worn, and c) what the pattern looks like. After that, the archaeologist will make a replica tool and use it in one or more fashions to see if the resulting wear pattern is similar to the one on the archaeological tool.

Last year, I made a use-wear analysis of my own, on a mysterious find category from the Norwegian Mesolithic period. The tools are typically found along the coast, and often in relation to settlement sites. The artefact type consists of a hand sized beach pebble with one or two heavily worn facets, usually on either side of the stone. Not only are the stones worn, but the facets are also carefully prepared prior to use, by pecking at them with another stone. But, no one really knows what they were for, and I set out to try and come closer to this mystery.

One of the mysterious stones (C53854/22 from Rørbekk 1, Svinesund, Norway)

So, I had to come up with a number of tasks that people in the Mesolithic may have done with such a tool. Then I did those tasks with replicated tools, in the hope that I would make a pattern similar to the archaeological ones. Out in the woods, I cracked 6 kg of hazelnuts, and with other stones I ground them up. Neither of the wear patterns showed any similarity to the real stones. But, with a third set of stones I bashed up some dried deer sinew, and this pattern of wear was almost identical to the archaeological stones.

Hazelnut cracking with replica tool well under way.

Separated deer sinew after 20 minutes of bashing.

In hindsight, I should probably also have rubbed some hides with the stones, as the wear trace did indicate that the stones were used on a soft, pliable surface. I will hopefully have the opportunity to go back and do that another day. But for now, a preliminary interpretation is that the stones were used with something soft that is most likely not a plant material, but not as soft as meat. It could very well be that inhabitants of the coastal settlement sites in Mesolithic Norway used these little stones to soften dried sinew before they used it to haft arrows and harpoons, or sew seal skins into bags, clothes, or tents. With more experiments, we may find out!

Tine Schenck is an experimental archaeologist with a special interest in Boreal, seasonal exploitation of resources.

Tracking hunter-gatherers in Scotland, using experimental archaeology.

I am an experimental archaeologist, as such I use primitive technologies and ancient skills to understand how our ancestors used to live. Some of my projects have included; stone bead making in Romania, tree bast experiments in Denmark, and Neanderthal birch bark tar production. In short, a range of exciting and fascinating projects. A major recent project for me has been to work on the west coast of Scotland trying to figure out how Mesolithic (11,500–6000 cal BP) hunter-gatherers were living. Archaeologists have evidence for the importance of fish and shellfish to their diet, but virtually nothing is known as to how these were caught or collected.

My research attempted to change this by using a combination of bushcraft/primitive skills and experimental archaeology. Initially, my work focussed on the prehistoric environments of Scottish west coast Mesolithic coastal sites. I then looked at a range of archaeological/traditional fishing gear and food collection strategies to see what might have been used in the Mesolithic. These perspectives, together with the prehistoric environmental data, guided my construction and use of fishing gear, working with the resources and technologies available to Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. Using my bushcraft/primitive skills I was able to make fishing lines from a range of materials; this included nettles as well as the bark from various trees. I also made basketry fish and crab pots that varied in size and shape depending on the type of natural vegetation that I had used. It was vital that I only used natural un-managed vegetation typical of the habitats of the Scottish Mesolithic and that I only used tools of stone, bone or shell. Only by restricting myself to the resources and tool kit of a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer could I go through similar thought processes and experiences.

The author extracting bramble fibres using a mussel shell.

I ended up spending much of my time grubbing around on remote Scottish islands, testing whatever I could find to see if I could make fishing lines, hooks or basket traps. This involved travelling to some of the most beautiful parts of Scotland and sitting on the coast fishing with my hand made gear.

I made and tested a wide range of fishing gear and travelled thousands of miles over 4 years and started to feel like a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer; lugging fishing gear to remote sites, planning to maximise the use of tides, experiencing lousy weather. These experiences provided me with an insight into the world of the Mesolithic coastal hunter-gatherer, revealing the extent of organisation and knowledge that they must have had in order to fully utilise their environment. The planning needed to maximise returns, whether foraging, hunting or collecting resources. The knowledge required of the environment; the places to find the best materials for a particular task, knowledge of seasons and the seasonal movement of species, when and where to be at a particular place at a particular time. This is how experimental archaeology can fill in some of the gaps in the archaeologicalrecord, the human facets that are missing.

It is of course very difficult to understand the mind-set of someone who lived 8000 years ago, but by using those ancient hunter-gatherer skills together with experimental archaeology, we can move some way toward them.

Dr Peter Groom is Course Manager of the Environmental Archaeology and Primitive Skills Programme at Reaseheath College, Nantwich, Cheshire, and a Director of the Mesolithic Resource Group mesolithic.org.uk.