Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T11:43:11.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acknowledged authenticity. Or did the origin of rock matter in the Mesolithic?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2021

Astrid J. Nyland
Astrid J. Nyland*
Affiliation:
Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Norway
*
Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article explores the concept of authenticity of rock, place and stone tools in the Mesolithic. It uses results from a recent pXRF analysis on a selection of greenstone adzes predominantly originating from a delimited area on the western coast of south Norway as its point of departure. The results show that, although the majority of the 80 analysed adzes were made of greenstone from one specific source, eight clearly stemmed from local outcrops away from this one source area. The quantitative geochemical data are not presented in detail. Instead, the focus is on the social significance of these stone objects and their sources as indicated by the results. I argue that the anomalies demonstrate an acknowledged social value placed on stone from a dedicated source area; they represent deliberate attempts to manipulate perception and thus replicate a specific social affinity. Emphasizing perception and appearance, I consider adzes of green stone as assemblages of knowledge, skill, place and social memory – as desirable objects that enhanced a feeling of belonging and social identity – and I question whether this means that people in the Mesolithic recognized and acknowledged something as authentic.

Keywords

Stone adzesprovenanceauthenticityappropriationperception
Type
Articles
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , June 2021 , pp. 77 - 94
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alsaker, S., 1987: Bømlo. Steinalderens råstoffsentrum på Sørvestlandet, Bergen.Google Scholar
Arsenault, D., 2004: Rock-art, landscape, sacred places. Attitudes in contemporary archaeological theory, in Chippindale, C. and Nash, G. (eds), The figured landscapes of rock art. Looking at pictures in place, Cambridge, 69–84.Google Scholar
Aubry, T., Luís, L., Llach, J.M. and Matias, H., 2012: We will be known by the tracks we leave behind. Exotic lithic raw materials, mobility and social networking among the Côa Valley foragers (Portugal), Journal of anthropological archaeology 31, 528–550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakker, K., and Bridge, G., 2006: Material worlds? Resource geographies and the ‘matter of nature’, Progress of human geographies 30, 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barth, F., 1969: Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference, Oslo.Google Scholar
Barth, F., 1975: Ritual and knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea, Oslo.Google Scholar
Baumeister, R.F., and Leary, M.R., 1995: The need to belong. Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation, Psychological bulletin 117, 497–529.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benjamin, W., 2008: The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, in Benjamin, W., The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility and other writings in media (ed. Mjennings, M.W., Doherty, B. and Levyn, T.Y.), Cambridge, MA, 19–55.Google Scholar
Bergsvik, K.A., 2003: Mesolithic ethnicity. Too hard to handle?, in Larsson, L., Knutsson, K., Loefler, D. and Åkerlund, A. (eds), Mesolithic on the move . Papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm 2000, Oxford, 290–301.Google Scholar
Bergsvik, K.A., 2006: Ethnic boundaries in Neolithic Norway, Oxford (BAR International Series 1554).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergsvik, K.A., and Olsen, A.B., 2003: Traffic in stone adzes in Mesolithic western Norway, in Larsson, L., Knutsson, K., Loeffler, D. and Åkerlund, A. (eds), Mesolithic on the move. Papers presented at the Sixth International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe, Stockholm 2000, Oxford, 395–404.Google Scholar
Bille, M., and Sørensen, T.F., 2007: An anthropology of luminosity. The agency of light, Journal of material culture 12, 263–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bille, M., and Sørensen, T.F.E., 2016: Elements of architecture. Assembling archaeology, atmosphere and the performance of building spaces, London.Google Scholar
Bjerck, H.B., 2008: Norwegian Mesolithic trends, in Bailey, G. and Spikins, P. (eds), Mesolithic Europe, Cambridge, 60–106.Google Scholar
Bradley, R., 2000: An archaeology of natural places, London.Google Scholar
Bradley, R., Meredith, P., Smith, J. and Edmonds, M., 1992: Rock physics and the Neolithic axe trade in Great Britain. Archaeometry 34, 223–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, E., 1996: How to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time. Phenomenological prolegomena, in Feld, S. and Basso, K.H. (eds), Senses of place, Santa Fe, NM, 13–52.Google Scholar
Clark, G., 1965: Traffic in stone axes and adze blades, in Hartwell, R.M. and Wilson, C. (eds), The economic history review, Utrecht, 1–28.Google Scholar
Conneller, C., 2011: An archaeology of materials. Substantial transformations in early prehistoric Europe, New York and London.Google Scholar
Conneller, C., 2013: Deception and (mis)representation. Skeumorphs, materials, and form, in Alberti, B., Jones, A.M. and Pollard, J. (eds), Archaeology after interpretation. Returning materials to archaeological theory, Walnut Creek, 119–134.Google Scholar
Connerton, P., 1989: How societies remember, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Cooney, G., and Mandal, S., 1995: Getting to the core of the problem. Petrological results from the Irish Stone Axe Project, Antiquity, 69, 969–980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, V., and Edmonds, M., 2011: Studying stone axes, in Davis, V. and Edmonds, M. (eds), Stone axe studies III, Oxford, 1–5.Google Scholar
Day, J., 2013: Introduction. Making senses of the past, in Day, J. (ed.), Making senses of the past. Toward a sensory archaeology, Carbondale, 1–31.Google Scholar
Delanda, M., 2006: A new philosophy of society. Assemblage theory and social complexity, London.Google Scholar
Dobres, M.-A., 2010: The phenomenal promise of chaîne opératoire . Mindfully engaged bodies and the manufacture of personhood in a regional perspective, in Barndon, R., Engevik, A. and Øye, I. (eds), The archaeology of regional technologies. Case studies from the Palaeolithic to the Age of the Vikings, Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter, 51–67.Google Scholar
Edensor, T., 2012: Vital urban materiality and its multiple absences. The building stone of central Manchester, Cultural geographies 20, 447–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edmonds, M., 2004: The Langdales. Landscape and prehistory in a Lakeland valley, Stroud.Google Scholar
Elliot, B., 2019: Craft theory in prehistory. Case studies from the Mesolithic of Britain and Ireland, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 85, 161–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fægri, K., 1944: Studies on the Pleistocene of western Norway. III Bømlo. Bergens Museums Årbok 1943, Bergen (Naturvitenskapelig rekke Nr. 8).Google Scholar
Fahlander, F., and Kjellström, A., 2010: Making sense of things. Archaeologies of sensory perception, Stockholm.Google Scholar
Ferguson, J.P., 2009: Rocking cosmopolitanism. Don McKay, strike/slip, and the implications of geology, English studies in Canada 35, 165–187.Google Scholar
Ferraby, R., 2015: Stone exposures. A cultural geology of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage site, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Exeter.Google Scholar
Fuglestvedt, I., 2017: Rock art and the wild mind. Visual imagery in Mesolithic Northern Europe, London.Google Scholar
Gell, A., 1992: The technology of enchantment and the enchantment of technology, in Coote, J. and Shelton, A. (eds), Anthropology, art and aesthetics, Oxford, 40–67.Google Scholar
Gjerland, B., 1984: Bergartsøkser i Vest-Norge. Distribusjon sett i forhold til praktisk funksjon, økonomisk tilpasning og tradisjon i steinalderen, unpublished master’s thesis, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Greenhough, B., 2010: Vitalist gographies. Life and the more-than-human, in Anderson, B. and Harrison, P. (eds), Taking place. Non-representational theories and geography, Farnham, 37–54.Google Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2016: Sensorial assemblages. Affect, memory and temporality in assemblage thinking, Cambridge archaeological journal 27, 169–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heidegger, M., 1971: Poetry, language, thought, New York.Google Scholar
Herva, V.-P., Nordquist, K., Lahelma, A. and Ikãheimo, J., 2014. Cultivation of perception and the emergence of the Neolithic world, Norwegian archaeological review 47, 141–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtdorf, C., 2013: On pastness. A reconsideration of materiality in archaeological object authenticity, Anthropological quarterly 86 (2), 427–443 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holtdorf, C., and Schadla-Hall, T., 1999: Age as artefact. On archaeological authenticity, European journal of archaeology 2, 229–247 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2007: Lines. A brief history, London and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2011: Being alive. Essays on movement, knowledge and description, London and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2013: Making. Anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, London and New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T., 2016: Lighting up the atmosphere, in Bille, M. and Sørensen, T.F. (eds), Elements of architecture. Assembling archaeology, atmosphere and the performance of building spaces, London, 163–176.Google Scholar
Ingold, T., 2017: Surface visions, Theory, culture and society 34, 99–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobson-Widding, A., 1979: Red–white–black as a mode of thought. A study of triadic classification by colours in the ritual symbolism and cognitive thought of the peoples of the lower Congo, Uppsala.Google Scholar
Jones, A.M., 2012: Living rocks. Animacy, performance and the rock art of the Kilmartin region, Argyll, Scotland, in Cochrane, A. and Jones, A.M. (eds), Visualising the Neolithic, Oxford, 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, A.M., 2020: An archaeology of affect. Art, ontology and the carved stone balls of Neolithic Britain, Journal of archaeological method and theory 27, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816–020–09473–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolderup, N.H., 1925: III. Petrologische Untersuchungen über das Material für Werkzeuge im westlichen Norwegen, Tschermaks mineralogische und petrographische Mitteilungen 38, 165–174.Google Scholar
Latham, A., and Mccormack, D.P., 2004: Moving cities. Rethinking the materialities of urban geographies, Progress in human geographies 28, 701–724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marila, M., 2011: Archaeology and authenticity, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Helsinki, at https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/26474, accessed 26 July 2020.Google Scholar
Morphy, H., 1994: Aesthetics across time and place. An anthropological perspective, Cambridge archaeological journal 4, 257–260.Google Scholar
Newman, G.E., and Smith, R.K., 2016: The need to belong motivates demand for authentic objects, Cognition 156, 129–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nyland, A.J., 2017a: Materialized taskscapes? Mesolithic lithic procurement in southern Norway, in Rajala, U. and Mills, P. (eds), Forms of dwelling. 20 years of taskscapes in archaeology, Oxford, 125–150.Google Scholar
Nyland, A.J., 2017b: Quarrying as a socio-political strategy at the Mesolithic. Neolithic transition in southern Norway, in Pereira, T. and Terradas, X. (eds), The exploitation of raw materials in prehistory. Sourcing, processing and distribution, Newcastle upon Tyne, 31–46.Google Scholar
Nyland, A.J., 2020a: In search of cloudstones? The contribution of charismatic rocks to understandings of Mesolithic and Neolithic communities in the montane regions of south Norway, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 86, https://doi.org/10.1017/ppr.2020.4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyland, A.J., 2020b: Nodal points in a Mesolithic mobile coastal world. Monumental quarries in south Norway, in Schülke, A. (ed.), Coastal landscapes of the Mesolithic. Human engagement with the coast from the Atlantic to the Baltic Sea, London, 341–358 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyland, A.J., Gebremariam, K.F. and With, R., in press: Challenging old truths? pXRF analyses of greenstone adzes in Rogaland, southwestern Norway, in Olsen, D.E.F. and Granados, T.J. (eds), The Stone Age Conference, 2017 in Bergen. Coast and society. Research and cultural heritage management, Bergen (UBAS 12).Google Scholar
Olsen, B., 2010: In defense of things. Archaeology and the ontology of objects, Lanham, MD.Google Scholar
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, 71–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pétrequin, P., Cassen, S., Errera, M., Klassen, L., Pétrequin, A.-M. and Sheridan, A., 2013: The value of things. The production and circulation of Alpine jade axes during the 5th–4th millennia in a European perspective, in Kerig, T. and Zimmermann, A. (eds), Economic archaeology. From structure to performance in European archaeology, Bonn, 65−82.Google Scholar
Pickering, A., 2010: Material culture and the dance of agency, in Hicks, D. and Beaudry, M.C. (eds), The Oxford handbook of material culture studies, Oxford, 191–208.Google Scholar
Ramberg, I.B., Bryhni, I., Nøttvedt, A. and Rangnes, K., 2007: Landet blir til. Norges geologi, Trondheim.Google Scholar
Risatti, H., 2007: A theory of craft. Function and aesthetic expression, Chapel Hill, NC.Google Scholar
Saunders, N.J., 1999: Biographies of brilliance. Pearls, transformations of matter and being, c. AD 1492, World archaeology 31, 243–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saunders, N.J., 2004: The cosmic earth. Materiality and mineralogy in the Americas, in Boivin, N. and Owoc, M.A. (eds), Soils, stones and symbols. Cultural perceptions of the mineral world, London, 123–142.Google Scholar
Sherry, V., 2007: On the question of modernism and the ‘authentic’, Modernism/modernity 14, 481–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skeates, R., 2017: Towards an archaeology of everyday aesthetics, Cambridge archaeological journal 27, 607–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skjelstad, G., 2003: Regionalitet i vestnorsk mesolitikum. Råstoffbruk og sosiale grenser på Vestlandskysten i mellom- og seinmesolitikum, unpublished thesis, Hovedfag, Department of Archaeology, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Skjelstad, G., 2011: Steinalderboplasser for Fosenhalvøya. Arkeologiske og naturvitenskapelige undersøkelser 2004–2007. T-Forbindelsen, Karmøy kommune, Nord-Rogaland, Stavanger (AmS-Varia 52).Google Scholar
Sørensen, T.F., 2016: Passage and passing. Movement, boundary and presence in neolithic mortuary architecture, in Bjerregaard, P., Rasmussen, A.E. and Sørensen, T.F. (eds), Materialities of passing. Explorations in transformation, transition and transience, London, 65–84.Google Scholar
Stutz, L.N., 2016: The importance of ‘getting it right’. Tracing anxiety in mesolithic burials, in Fleisher, J. and Norman, N. (eds), The archaeology of anxiety. The materiality of anxiousness, worry, and fear, New York, 21–40.Google Scholar
Thomas, J., 2004: Archaeology’s place in modernity, Modernity/modernism 11, 1, 17–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, M., 1968: On charisma and institution building. Selected papers, Chicago.Google Scholar