Functional Riddles, Chipped Stone Technologies, and Fiber Processing in the Late Sixth and Fifth Millennium BCE in Turkmenistan and Northwestern Europe

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Use-wear and residue analysis draws attention to complexities of technological processes that otherwise remain out of reach archaeologically. Enigmatic wear traces described by microwear analysts as “polish 23,” “polish 10,” and “polis non familiar” occur on distinctive chipped stone tools from Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites in northwestern Europe. Although the wear traces have not been fully replicated experimentally, their unique characteristics hint at processing fibers of plant and possibly animal origin. High-power microwear analysis of chipped stone tools from the Aeneolithic village (ca. 4650–4350 cal BCE) of Monjukli Depe in the Kopet Dag piedmont of southern Turkmenistan revealed similar wear traces to those documented in northwestern Europe. In this paper, I evaluate the use-wear evidence from Monjukli Depe in the context of current understandings of fiber processing technologies from the late sixth and fifth millennium BCE in northwestern Europe.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Cordage, Yarn, and Associated Paraphernalia   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36149.0