8589356492

Przegląd Archeologiczny Vol. 28: 1980, pp. 5-55

PL ISSN 0079-7138

JACEK LECH

FLINT MINING AMONG THE EARLY FARMING COMMUNITIES

OF CENTRAL EUROPE

This paper discusscs the main deposits of the siliceous rocks in Central Europę and its vicinity, and tbc methods of their exploitation among the carlicst farming communities. The meaning of the terms “deposit”, “minę”, and “mining” in the contcxt of studies of the primiti-ve communities is considered. The methods of cxtracting the raw matcrials, from the simple stholes to underground galleries, arc distinguish-ed and they are illustrated with examplcs of the mining workings. The chronology of mining of the siliceous rocks in Central Europę, based on ¹⁴C dates, is presented and compared with ^,4C dating for other regions of prehistorie mining in Europę. It is shown that the beginnings of mining of the early farming communities are conncctcd with LBK (Danubian I) in the second half of the 5th Mill.b.c. The development of mining of the siliceous rocks lasts through the 4-3 Mill.b.c. and its dcclinc takes place around the middle of the 2nd Mill.b.c.

INTRODUCTION

Whcn in 1933 Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott published their famous article — The Age of the British Flint Mines — they mentioned almost 40 flint mines for the whole of Europę. But no minę from Central Europę is among them, not even the one at Krzemionki Opatowskie which was already known (Radwan 1926; Stelmachowska 1927; J. Żurowski 1929) nor the mines at Krasnoye Selo (Szmit 1926) in Poland or Mauer near Vienna in Austria (Bayer 1930). The nearest to this area werc the mines at Rijckholt—St.Geertruid in the Dutch Limburg and in the region of Malmo in Sweden. Al-though today we know much morę about the prehistorie flint mining in Central Europę, as a result of the work of archaeologists from many countries, the results of those studies are not very wcll known becausc of the language barriers and the difficultics with getting the literaturę. These difficulties were stressed latcly by E. Schmid (1973a, 15). It is one of the reasons why I have prepared this article.

The second reason arises from the need to discuss certain problems conncctcd with the oldest European flint mining. We must include here the meaning of such terms as “deposit”, “minę” and “mining”. The problem of typology of methods of obtaining siliceous rocks among primitive communities is connected with that. Another interesting field is linked with the social aspeets of prehistorie mining, based on the archaeological sour-ces. It seems that twenty years after the publication of the well known work by M. Jahn — Der alteste Bergbau in Europa — we can look at some problems of flint mining in prehistorie Europę in a different way.

I. DEPOSITS

Minerał resources form in the earth crust natural agglomerations suitable for mining if they meet certain quantitative and qualitative requirements (Gruszczak 1972, 11). In such cases they are called “deposits”. Agglomerations which do not fulfil such conditions are called “outerops”. In the Atlantic and Subboreal periods the need for flints werc dircctly shaped by the constant de-mand connected with permanent wearing out of tools madę of this raw materiał in every-day work, and by the cultural tradition which controlled their method of production. The abilities and technical knowledge in the field of flint treatment were important. They allow-ed, to a certain degree, adaptation of the materiał to the existing patterns. The value of demand was also in-fluenced by the population numbers and its density. Taking things theoretically each minerał or rock agglo-