antler

Introduction

Despite experimental archaeological approaches being well known in Brazilian archaeology since the 1970’s, it has rarely produced studies until the beginning of the 21th century. The first deep debate on the subject of experimental archaeology was provided by Miller Jr. (1975), specifically on the application of the approach to lithic technology using Corumbataí flint - typical raw material from the Rioclarense industry. In that occasion, Miller Jr.

Antler working was prevalent throughout prehistory, with a breadth of intricately detailed and technologically complex antler artefacts observed within the archaeological record. In particular, during the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic, antler working with flint tools would have been a time-consuming process. While the chaîne opératoire of producing certain antler artefacts has previously been explored...

From the Neolithic period comes a whole range of various kinds of artefacts made of antler (for example axes, hammer-adzes), distinguished by the presence of a large hole (diameter over 2 cm) in their structure. With time, archaeologists started to wonder about possible ways of producing holes of this type...

The purpose of this book, which was originally presented as a dissertation at Hamburg University, is to present the 1,293 bone, antler, horn and ivory tools that were found at the terp settlement Feddersen Wierde in the coastal area of Lower Saxony, Germany, and to decide on the possible functions of the tools.