Managing raw materials in Vinča culture: a case study of osseous raw materials from Vitkovo

Abstract

In analyses of material recovered from archaeological sites, a dichotomy often exists between ‘specialist’ and ‘archaeological’ studies. This is especially noticeable in the case of faunal remains and bone artefacts. Bone artefacts are sometimes treated separately from fauna with emphasis on typological data, or they can be left within the fauna with only a remark on ‘other taphonomic traces’, thereby overlooking technological features of these artefacts. However, bone industry provides excellent insight into technological choices regarding raw material exploitation, since the availability and mechanical properties of specific materials can be directly observed. In this paper we tried to link bone artefacts with other faunal remains on the basis of a case study of the Vinča culture site at Vitkovo with a special emphasis on the relations between butchering techniques and raw material selection and the relations between the economically most important species and the bones most commonly used in tool manufacture.