Prehistoric Stone Raw Materials from the Bükk Mountains in Northeastern Hungary

Abstract

From the period of the Neanderthals to those of the Late Neolithic populations, the Bükk Mountains region played an important part in the lives of various prehistoric societies, and the varied geological history of this territory provided distinct circumstances for the production of stone implements. The major goal of our research is to outline the current state of information concerning the prehistoric use of the diverse silicified source materials of the Bükk mountains. The results of these studies are presented concerning four selected local rock types, cited in the archaeological literature as the silicified sandstone of Egerbakta, the radiolarite and hornstone (black chert), the silicified marlstone and the quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite). Except for the latter, little attention has previously been paid to studying them in detail. Our new petrographic analyses revealed two variants of the raw material from Egerbakta: a silicified sandstone and a diatomaceous detrital chert. The other samples turned out to be radiolarites. This result confirmed what was already suggested for the hornstones (black cherts), however, it has new consequences for the “silicified marlstone”. Regarding the prehistoric use of the selected raw materials, archaeological data show interesting dynamics through time. The Mousterian groups of the region used a large spectrum of rocks for lithic tools with a preference for hornstone (black cherts) and radiolarite in the southern part, and the quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite) in the northeastern part. The Bábonyian/Micoquian assemblages are characterized by a bifacial toolkit and an apparent preference for quartz-porphyry (metarhyolite). At the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic, a new attitude appears in the region: the Aurignacian groups almost completely ignored local sources. During the Neolithization of the Carpathian Basin, the lithic assemblages of the Alföld Linear Pottery culture became more and more habituated to the locally available rock types, albeit their raw material economy was based on limnosilicites and obsidian. Another change took place during the Late Neolithic when supra-regional sources became dominant over local or regional sources.

Keywords

• petrography
• raw material economy
• quartz-porphyry
• silicified sandstone
• radiolarite
• palaeolithic
• neolithic