Polished stone tool biographies and their social and economic impact in the Aegean Neolithic

Introduction

This project explores the emergence of value and wealth as a concept in human history. Social and economic changes accelerated during the Neolithic, but until now it remains unclear what triggered inequality in these communities. Thus, the project aims to nuance how inequality evolved in human history.

Research Focus

To approach this key question, the study will investigate social and economic transformations initiated by the appearance of polished stone tools (axes, adzes, chisels, and wedges) recovered from Neolithic sites, burials, households, and quarries from the 7th to the 4th millennium BC in the Aegean.

Project Hypothesis

The project hypothesis is linking the Neolithic human awareness of raw material availability and biographies of polished stone tool assemblages with the abstract concepts of the different kinds of value and wealth in these communities.

Work Packages

The project will pursue its objectives by initiating four work packages which will, for the first time, document and compare polished stone tools made of:

1. Rare raw materials (jadeitite, nephrite, omphacitite, or eclogite)
2. Common raw materials (serpentinite, andesite, basalt, gabbro, and hematite)

These will be sourced from sites, burials, and households in selected synchronic and diachronic case studies.

Objectives

By revealing the location of previously unknown raw material sources and quarry sites of polished stone tools, the project will be able to discover the interrelations between local, regional, and superregional exchange networks.

Methodology

Through techno-morphological, use-wear, and contextual analysis of polished stone tools, it will be possible to qualify and quantify the different stages of the studied objects, from procurement, manufacture, and usage to the final deposition.

Data Analysis

The data from the polished stone tool assemblages will be related to other materials (lithics, ceramics, bones, shells, obsidian, flint, copper, and gold) from the studied sites, burials, and households, in order to identify new aspects related to the value of objects and fluctuations in wealth and inequality.