Production and Function of Barbed Points from the Gumelniţa Tell of Hârșova (Constanţa County) / Producţia și funcţia vârfurilor barbelate din așezarea Gumelniţa de la Hârșova (jud. Constanţa)

Abstract

For the Neo-Eneolithic of the Romanian territory, barbed points (harpoons) represent the type of artifact belongingto the osseous materials industry on which we have most information. Th e lot we had at our disposal for this study,coming from the settlement from Hârşova-tell, is made up of 19 harpoons (coming from the diggings of theperiod 1989–2008), made of Cervus elaphus antler. In this study we have tried to identify how the raw materialwas obtained, turned into finished pieces (processing techniques), the economy of these finished pieces (the wayshow they were used and their role in the economy), and finally the eventual repairs of the fractured pieces andtheir reintegration in the economy of the community. We also provide a series of experimental and ethnographicexamples, in order to illustrate that the general denomination of ‘harpoon’ is incorrect, when extended to designateall the points with barbs. Th e ethnographic comparisons, which at first seemed to offer a key to understanding howthese weapons were used, in the end complicate the problem by demonstrating that prey can be hunted in differentways and that the same weapon can be used with different hunting methods.