A Study of Polished Stone Tools From New Guinea.

Discrimination of prehistoric polished stone tools from Hungary with non-destructive chemical Prompt Gamma Activation Analyses (PGAA)

The appearance of polished stone tools has been taken as one of the important indicators of the beginnings of the Neolithic. Early polished stone tools excavated in South China are discussed in this paper. The polishing technology developed from stone tools with polished blades to whole polished stone tools. Different kinds of polished stone tools appeared at different times. The earliest polished stone tools are axes, adyes and cutters, with only the blades polished. They date to 21000 - 19000 cal BP. The whole polished stone tools appeared thousands of years later. The relationship of thepolishing technology with other factors during the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic should be discussed after more detailed information has been obtained.

The authors present the evidence gathered during the interdisciplinary study of several polished stone tools from some Neolithic sites in Hungary. In particular, the cutting-edged tool production (axes, adzes, chisels) involves knapping at several stages of the operational-chain within an artefact’s ‘life cycle’ - from raw material procurement, its manufacture, use, and discard. Some specific fine-grained and non-siliceous raw materials, among which are mainly hornfels, “white stones” and a few greenstones, show evidence of being worked by knapping as shown by the recovery of rough-outs, flaked similarly to biface artefacts, reworked pieces during retooling attempts, and several flakes detached before and after polishing the artefact surfaces. These latter demonstrate that re-sharpening and re-working polished cutting-edged tools was a common practice within the settlements during the whole Neolithic period. These small flakes, that sometimes look like true bladelets, have been often confused with, and published as, chipped stone tools. Therefore, it is important to get a holistic view of the whole stone industry during the study of the lithic assemblages. As in the case for chert and flint in N Europe, which have been intensively exploited for the production of polished axes and adzes, some other lithic raw materials could be easily worked by knapping for the production of polished tools, especially micro-crystalline rocks that have technical response and physical properties very similar to true flint and chert. Moreover, there are indeed implications regarding social organization among Neolithic communities, not only from the point of view of raw material procurement. Notably, the technical capability of producing and maintaining in efficiency the polished stone tools had to be acquired by individuals belonging to each household within the community, since stone axe-adzes were polyfunctional tools for mundane and multiple tasks. Therefore, as an important means for survival, the production of stone tools, both chipped and polished, was a knowledge certainly transmitted from generation to generation, although we still have to understand the modes and social implications of the transfer in details.

Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis, a new method in the archaeological study of polished stone tools and their raw materials

Russian regional studies on the frontier of technical and humanitarian sciences demonstrate specific directions of digitalization of the ethnographic museum space. The need for improving the socio-cultural environment in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, solving IT problems of local museums, processing significant amounts of ethnocultural information determine the areas of joint - engineering and ethnographic - scientific research. The experience of these works at Vyatka State University has been gained in recent decades. The sources for such scientific activity are the collections of ethnographic expeditions of the university since 2003. They include material and written sources. There are ethnographic and engineering (digital) data processing methods, specific museum work techniques among the research methods. Specific areas are the digital presentation of specific ethnographic objects, the development of virtual expositions and exhibitions, the creation of a virtual ethnographic museum / scansen, the study of electronic “feedback” with visitors, the creation of an ethnographic data bank for funds. The article provides a specific set of software products. Elements of specific algorithms for applying the IT product for the main types of museum activity — scientific research, exposition, stock work, and contacts with visitors — are shown. The practical value of the considered joint border scientific research for modern regional communities is obvious. The beneficiaries of the results are the student and teaching communities in universities, the fields of culture, education, tourism, civil society, and law enforcement agencies. A special effect of cyber ethnography is the remote use of ethnocultural heritage in museums.

Now, for the first time, it is possible to place in an exact archaeological context the polished tools which have been collected for many years on the surface in the savanna immediately to the south of the equatorial forest. In Lower Zaire, in an area of 6000 km2, polished tools have been found systematically associated with a particular type of pottery. This pottery, which was previously known as Groupvi pottery and which we propose calling Ngovo group pottery is very distinctive.

Chisels occupy a small part of the studies concerning polished stone tools. Havying an area (the north-west of Romania) but especially two sites – Porț and Pericei- that produced a vast quantity of polished lithics, with a clear predominance of chisels, we were able to make some general observations regarding what is different about them related to other polished tools. Two main aspects were followed: ways of stone working adapted to produce chisels and the chronological value of their typology. Regarding the first issue, cores were prepared by polishing a narrow stripe indicating the part that had to be sawed for obtaining a chisel's preform. Pecking was used afterwards in different proportions, depending on the shape of the chisel. Seriation of the sites based on chisel's typology illustrate a general evolution that is marked by local preferences

그 동안의 청동기시대 석기 연구는 마제석기를 중심£로 이루어졌는데, 이러한 연구 경향은 마제 석기가 본격적으로 시용되면서 타제석기는 소멸한다는 인식에 가장 큰 영향을 받은 것으로 보인다. 그러나 이와 같은 인식은 구체적 검토를 거친 것이 아니며, 일부 보고 및 연구사례를 보았을 때 타제 석기가 사용되었을 가능성은 충분히 있다. 오히려 현재의 석기 기종 구성으로는 당시의 생활상을 이해할 수 없다는 점에서 그 동안 간과되어 왔던 타제석기에 대해 검토가 필요하다고 생각된다. 이에 본고에서는 타제석기 연구의 일환으로 타제인기의 여러 속성과 기능을 검토하였다. 검토 대상이 된 자료는 충주 조동리유적의 타제인기로, 석재 • 인부형태 • 잔손질 퉁의 속성과 사 용흔을 중심으로 그 특징을 분석하였다. 석재는 사암 및 세립사암, 편암 등이 확인되었는데, 다른 기종의 석기에 사용된 것과 유사한 것으로 미루어 보아 석기 제작 과정의 부산물을 이용해 제작했을 가능성이 높다고 판단하였다. 인부 각도와 사용흔의 관계도 주목되는데 인부 각도가 30∼50중심인 그룹에서는 미세박리혼과 마모흔이 다양하게 나타난 반면, 90중심인 그룹에서는 마모혼I만 나타나 전자의 그룹은 다양한 작업에 사용되고 후자의 그룹은 특정 용도로 사용되었을 것이라 추청하였다. 나아가 석재나 부정형의 형태 등은 공들여 만들지 않은 석기, 즉 일회성 석기일 가능성을 시사하며, 이에 따라 석재 획득에서부터 폐기까지의 주기가 다른 석기보다 훨씬 짧았을 것으로 생각된다.Previous studies on Bronze Age stone tools have focused on polished stone tools, in part due to the perception that polished stone tools replaced chipped stone tools. This perception, however, has not been thoroughly investigated. Ample reports and cases indicate that chipped stone tools continued to be used. In fact, since we cannot fully understand the Bronze Age life with only polished stone tools, there is a need to study chipped stone tools that have been overlooked thus far. The present paper examines various features and functions of chipped stone blades as a part of the larger research on chipped stone tools. The focus of this study are the chipped stone blades from Jodongri site in Chungju. The study analyzes features such as raw material, blade shape, final touches, and use-wear. Sandstone, fine-grained sandstone, and schist were used as raw materials. Since the raw materials that were used are similar to those used in other stone tools, there is a high possibility that by-products were used. The relationship between the blade angle and use-wear was also examined. In the tool group where the blade angle is mostly 30~50 micro-chipping patterns and use-wear are seen in various forms. In contrast, in the tool group here the blade angle is mostly 90, only use-wear is seen. As such, it suggests that the former group was used in a variety of tasks, while the latter was used for specific purposes. Furthermore, the raw materials used and the indeterminate shape indicate that they were stone tools made in a casual manner: they were disposable, suggesting that the cycle from the acquisition of raw materials to disposal was much shorter than that of other stone tools.

The article is dedicated to the outstanding Indologist, researcher and translator of the Mahabharata Yaroslav Vasilkov, who turns 80 on December 12, 2023. Yaroslav Vladimirovich Vasilkov is rightfully considered the head of the modern St. Petersburg Indological school. He enjoys well-deserved respect from fellow orientalists, ethnographers, folklorists, and philologists. The article provides an overview of the scientific activities of our Jubilee, examines his achievements as a translator and researcher of the Mahabharata, a biographer of the first Russian Indianist Gerasim Lebedev, a specialist in Indian folklore, as well as activities in organizing international scientific conferences. Yaroslav Vassilkov was born on 12th of December 1943. He graduated from Faculty of Oriental studies of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) State University and started to work as Indologist at Leningrad branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies (now St. Petersburg Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In 1993 he became head of South and South-East Asia department there. Since 2005 Yaroslav Vassilkov is leading research fellow of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Here he studied the Mahabharata as an epic and a source of folklore themes and ethnographic data. Dr. Vassilkov also contributed much to the research on life and academic activity of Gerasim Lebedev, the first Russian Indologist and a founder of the Bengali National Theater. He also wrote extensively on biographies of Yuri Roerich, Rahul Sankrityayan and other scholars.

The site of Porț-“Corău” (Sălaj County) represents the same neolithic settlement as Suplacu de Barcău-“Corău” site (Bihor County), belonging and defining the Suplac cultural group, included in the Cluj-Cheile Turzii-Lumea Nouă-Zau-Iclod-Suplac complex, redefined also as Zau culture. In both areas, but especially at Porț, a large number of polished stone tools (about 1700), showing different working stages, were discovered along with raw material showing traces of manufacture. The sistematic investigations, conducted by Doina Ignat at Suplacu de Barcău, lead to the discovery of more than 500 polished stone tools, making the site of “Corău” the richest one in this type of artifacts in the whole country. She had created a typology for chiesels, axes, adzes and smashing stones, each category being divided into types and subtypes.The preventive diggings from Porț gave us not only more polished stone artifacts, but also the possibility to reconsider their typology. First we must add some categories to those defined by D. Ignat: strikers, axe-chiesels, and tools used only for manufacturing the stone tools: sandstone slabs for polishing and stone slabs used for cutting/splitting the preforms. Second, and more important, we must redefine the types and subtypes of each category, based on common and general criterias. We have chosen usually the shape to define the type and the long profile to define the subtipe, adding here the presence of perforation. The main forms found for chiesels, axes and adzes are: rectangular, elongated, trapezoidal, oval, quadrilateral. The long profiles can be: rectangular, plain-rounded, plainconvex, rounded, oblique. Different combination between shapes and profiles appear. No chronological value can be given to the typology, the lithic material can be dated only by its context. The typology remains open for other types and subtypes based on the same criteria.

The paper illustrates the results of an archaeometric project on the raw material characterization of some collections of prehistoric polished stone tools, dated from the Early Neolithic to the Bronze Age, from sites located in Northern Italy. The petrographic analyses (surface and thin-section microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy-energy-dispersive spectrometry, X-ray fluorescence, atomic absorption spectrometry) revealed a raw material circulation network involving the whole of Northern Italy. Here occur the outcrops of high-pressure (HP) meta-ophiolites, which were widely utilized from the Early Neolithic onwards for the manufacture of polished cutting-edged tools, which are represented by axes, adzes and chisels. Other raw materials, such as serpentinites, seem to have been preferred for the production of other types of artefacts, including stone rings used as bracelets. The analyses revealed that the prehistoric polished stone artefacts were made from uncommon lithologies such as Alpine eclogites, jades and other HP meta-ophiolites. These rocks were exploited from primary and secondary sources, mainly located in Piedmont, the Aosta Valley and Liguria. During the Neolithic these lithologies are the dominant raw material for the polished stone tools in Northern Italy and southeastern France. In the same period, in other European countries the same lithologies occur less frequently as axe or adze blades; in NW Europe they were frequently used for manufacturing long ceremonial axes, which have a typology that does not appear to belong to the Italian tradition.

TO set out to study a Stone Age people by aeroplane sounds rather a paradoxical proceeding. But it can be done in New Guinea, so rapid has been the progress of air travel owing to the finding of gold in the interior and the enterprise of a few men who realized the possibilities of the aeroplane in solving the transport problems of the miners. I left Salamaua (on the Huon Gulf) at the end of July 1936 in a Gypsy Moth, and after half an hour's flight over mountain ranges was set down at the little landing-ground called Surprise Creek, on the Upper Watut river, within some six hours' walk of villages whose inhabitants only a very short while before had been entirely ignorant of metal, and who were actually still living at a stage of culture fairly comparable with that of the people of Britain in the neolithic period. My journey was undertaken on behalf of the Pitt-Rivers Museum, on the suggestion of Professor Henry Balfour, with the object of learning what I could of the life of a modern Stone Age people, and in particular of their material culture and their methods of making and using stone tools, for in this way an ethnologist can sometimes fill up some of the gaps in the archaeological record. I am not here concerned with details of technique, but I shall try to give some account of the use a primitive people makes of the natural resources that are available.

The phenomenon of prehistoric ritual pits: Several examples from the central Balkans

The present paper deals with a scientific analysis of the interior design within the licensing process concerned with the renovation, modernization and aesthetic editing of the Museum of History and Ethnography in Ungheni, carried out in 2022. In the context, the historical course of formation and evolution of the museum is described, prominent personalities who contributed to the development of the museum, museum pieces and categories of exhibits in the museum's possession. All these have been used in value through the vision of interior design which is researched through the historical, ethnographic and artistic prism. Through the research, the role and responsibility of interior design in the process of consolidation and valorization of the national cultural heritage is highlighted. The given study presents the result of the interior design project, concerned with the correspondence or synchronization of the new modern implementations with the ethnographic data inherited from the historical period.

‘Whitestone’ is a characteristic raw material in the Late Neolithic (Tisza and Lengyel culture) polished stone tool (chisel, adze, macehead) archaeological record in Southern Hungary. However, the lithology—the technical term not reflecting a petrographic definition—needs detailed petrographic-analytical investigations (by optical microscopy, PGAA, and SEM-EDS) to determine the exact rock types and to connect them to specific geological sources. This article identifies the main types of ‘whitestone’ and, furthermore, focuses on the predominant ‘silicified magnesite’ type and the secondary ‘silicified limestone/dolomite’ type. Based on our results, both types originated from the alteration of serpentinized ultramafic assemblages, most probably from the closest magnesitic alteration zones of serpentinite outcrops in Serbia. Thus, the most possible provenance of the Late Neolithic ‘whitestone’ polished stone tools is the Serbian magnesite. These lithologies are in the territory of the Late Neolithic Vinča culture, which was engaged in mass production of ‘whitestone’ tools. This fact indicates the strong relationship of that population with the Tisza and Lengyel communities.