NOT ALL ABOUT THE QUARRIES?
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-25

Pragmatic aspects such as availability and high quality raw material cannot solely account for the use of a Prehistoric quarry. Furthermore, whereas scale of extraction, remote location, or time-depth of activity may impress and induce a sense of a site being extraordinary, scale is not necessarily that which made a site significant. In order to characterize a site, to identify varying value and the significance given place, rock, and procurement practices, a relational perspective and differentiation between contemporary sites is necessary. Studying quarry sites as part of a chainé operatoir render visible the many choices involved in lithic procurement practices. The quarries, tailing piles, workshop sites, and debitage at settlement sites are all part of the practice, as is the quarried rocks’ wider distribution and actual use in contemporary societies. My point of departure is a recent comparison of more than 20 quarry sites in Norway, dating from the Mesolithic to the Pre-Roman Iron Age, but I will also exemplify with sites beyond Norway.
Over time, deliberate and repeated choices of ways to procure rock, be it quarrying or not, become traditions. Thus, socially situated practices such as lithic procurement can be regarded strategic, socio-political, and sometimes even ritual. Dependent on social context, the exploitation of specific quarries can represent local affinity in their monumentality and time-depth, other sites may have been social arenas for specific activities, and still others may have gained a ‘mythical’ or status reflected in an over-regional desire for that particular rock.


Author(s): Nyland, Astrid (Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger)