Session: #618

Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Looking across Europe we can see a strong tendency towards geochemical and petrographic characterization of raw materials. Collecting, sourcing and finding new materials unveil so far unknown rocks used by prehistoric communities. In addition to on-going investigations describing the occurrence and geological nature of raw material, determining the levels at which the raw material occurs in the deposits, as well as the stratigraphic context and geological dating of the layers, the principal goal is to identify instrumental methods for an accurate distinction of siliceous rocks and application of the results in archaeological studies. On one hand the new developed methods provide some very useful tools to discriminate various kinds of rocks but on the other hand the exchange of scientific results is fragmentary due to speech barriers and publications being printed in local series. All this affects our state of knowledge and causes stagnation in methodological development.
We would like to direct our invitation to scientists working on the problem of stone material used by the prehistoric societies. Our goal is to encourage presentation of papers on applying geochemical and petrographic methods, describing the features of raw materials. Beyond this problematic, what are the respective contributions of the different methods to the reconstitution of the prehistoric communities? How do they affect our reconstitution of the functioning of prehistoric communities, i.e. the description of extraction, processing and distribution of siliceous rocks. We hope that session could help to lift the barriers by creating a space for consultations and experience exchange.

raw-materials, identification, geochemia, petrographia, distribution

no

no

no

Dr Dagmara H. Werra (Poland) ^1,2

Dr Iwona Sobkowiak-Tabaka (Poland) ^3,4
Jean-Philippe Collin (Belgium) ^5,6
Vitali Asheichyk (Belarus) ^7,8