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While engaged on a fruitless rummage through old storage boxes for some transverse arrowheads to show you (they’ll probably be in the last box I look in), I came across this little group that I thought you might like to see.
I’m sure many of you have had the “that’s not an artefact, it’s a broken piece of stone” conversation with non-enthusiasts when showing things in your collection. Sometimes, pointing out the knapping features isn’t as convincing as demonstrating that the artefacts represent a consistent style with multiple known examples in the archaeological record. This group is a case in point.
All five of these Neolithic mini-awls are made from Turonian flint, in the same stylistic form, and were found in the same area (Peu-Richard in France) that has yielded hundreds of them.
The term ‘Neolithic’ was coined in England by Sir John Lubbock and first used in his 1865 book ‘Prehistoric Times’. Later French authors (notably Gabriel de Mortillet) proposed splitting up the Neolithic into a series of separate time periods but struggled to find a satisfactory chronology. In 1883 de Mortillet concluded that the Neolithic was a unitary period in man’s history and proposed re-naming it the ‘Peurichardian’, after the recently-discovered settlement site of ‘Peu-Richard’ at Thénac in the Charente Maritime region of France.
There were many subsequent suggestions and proposals but, ultimately, the accepted sub-divisions for the Neolithic are largely geographic, representing differences in cultural practice and technology found in particular regions. Although they can be given date periods based on occupation of the sites they’re named after, they overlap, and are not sequential temporal subdivisions of the Neolithic as such. And so it was with Peu-Richard, leading to the term ‘Peurichardian’ (also Peu-Richardien) for a specific regional culture.
Peu-Richard itself is a low hill overlooking marshland where, in 1882, a farm labourer uncovered remnants of what turned out to be a fortified Neolithic enclosure with multiple defensive ditches. The landowner, Baron Eschasseriaux, was an amateur archaeologist and immediately started excavating. The site proved to be rich in animal bones, intricately incised potsherds, worked flint and implements.
[Picture from “A Century of Research on the Peu-Richardien” by Chris Scarre in ‘Antiquity LVIII, 1984]
Although the pottery styles (some pictured below) have been found elsewhere, the sheer amount of it at Peu-Richard and the surrounding area led to it being designated the ‘type-site’ for the culture that produced it. There are now at least fifty known sites in the area, many of them similarly fortified. Radiocarbon dates for material from the main Peu-Richardien sites range between 2840 BC +/- 250 years to 2120 BC +/- 110 years but the culture probably began around 3.500 BC, perhaps at nearby Saintonge.
Peu-Richardien pottery of the Saintonge and Poitou varieties with incised and channelled decoration. [Pictures from “A Century of Research on the Peu-Richardien” by Chris Scarre in ‘Antiquity LVIII, 1984]
Peu-Richard is also the type site for these distinctive mini-awls. There has been one use-wear study that I know of (unpublished) which concluded that they were used for bone-working. I don’t doubt it but these tools are incredibly numerous, to the extent that it’s difficult to believe their prime function wasn’t for use as pottery gravers to produce the incised ware that’s characteristic of the culture.
I’m sure many of you have had the “that’s not an artefact, it’s a broken piece of stone” conversation with non-enthusiasts when showing things in your collection. Sometimes, pointing out the knapping features isn’t as convincing as demonstrating that the artefacts represent a consistent style with multiple known examples in the archaeological record. This group is a case in point.
All five of these Neolithic mini-awls are made from Turonian flint, in the same stylistic form, and were found in the same area (Peu-Richard in France) that has yielded hundreds of them.
The term ‘Neolithic’ was coined in England by Sir John Lubbock and first used in his 1865 book ‘Prehistoric Times’. Later French authors (notably Gabriel de Mortillet) proposed splitting up the Neolithic into a series of separate time periods but struggled to find a satisfactory chronology. In 1883 de Mortillet concluded that the Neolithic was a unitary period in man’s history and proposed re-naming it the ‘Peurichardian’, after the recently-discovered settlement site of ‘Peu-Richard’ at Thénac in the Charente Maritime region of France.
There were many subsequent suggestions and proposals but, ultimately, the accepted sub-divisions for the Neolithic are largely geographic, representing differences in cultural practice and technology found in particular regions. Although they can be given date periods based on occupation of the sites they’re named after, they overlap, and are not sequential temporal subdivisions of the Neolithic as such. And so it was with Peu-Richard, leading to the term ‘Peurichardian’ (also Peu-Richardien) for a specific regional culture.
Peu-Richard itself is a low hill overlooking marshland where, in 1882, a farm labourer uncovered remnants of what turned out to be a fortified Neolithic enclosure with multiple defensive ditches. The landowner, Baron Eschasseriaux, was an amateur archaeologist and immediately started excavating. The site proved to be rich in animal bones, intricately incised potsherds, worked flint and implements.
[Picture from “A Century of Research on the Peu-Richardien” by Chris Scarre in ‘Antiquity LVIII, 1984]
Although the pottery styles (some pictured below) have been found elsewhere, the sheer amount of it at Peu-Richard and the surrounding area led to it being designated the ‘type-site’ for the culture that produced it. There are now at least fifty known sites in the area, many of them similarly fortified. Radiocarbon dates for material from the main Peu-Richardien sites range between 2840 BC +/- 250 years to 2120 BC +/- 110 years but the culture probably began around 3.500 BC, perhaps at nearby Saintonge.
Peu-Richardien pottery of the Saintonge and Poitou varieties with incised and channelled decoration. [Pictures from “A Century of Research on the Peu-Richardien” by Chris Scarre in ‘Antiquity LVIII, 1984]
Peu-Richard is also the type site for these distinctive mini-awls. There has been one use-wear study that I know of (unpublished) which concluded that they were used for bone-working. I don’t doubt it but these tools are incredibly numerous, to the extent that it’s difficult to believe their prime function wasn’t for use as pottery gravers to produce the incised ware that’s characteristic of the culture.
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