Diversity in obsidian use in the prehistoric and early historic Middle East

Abstract

The presence of obsidian in the Near East has always evoked a response about its exotic nature and origins. It was not until 1960s, however, that this was put onto a scientific footing when Colin Renfrew and his collaborators began to explore obsidian in Turkey and the Mediterranean. Their characterisation of the sources allowed them to attribute artefacts to different sources and suggest models of dispersal and distribution. Since then considerably more artefacts have been attributed to sources, although mostly only small numbers from individual sites; this has led to various interpretations of how obsidian was obtained and used; new studies have considered least cost path analysis, network analysis and agent based modelling. Increasingly, new methods of provenancing of artefacts have also meant that large number of artefacts can be analysed relatively speedily and efficiently. Portable instruments allow data to be collected outside laboratories, avoiding restrictions imposed by export licenses or simplifying work on museum collections. Here we employ richness and diversity indexes to elucidate some of the patterns in obsidian source use and argue that there are several reasons why the provenancing of large proportions of assemblages will be critical in exploiting the true potential of obsidian studies in the Near East, even though the initial haphazard, small sample approach has been quite effective in sketching out the big picture.

Extending the scale of obsidian studies: Towards a high‐resolution investigation of obsidian prehistoric circulation patterns in the southern Caucasus and north‐western Iran

“…They have defined time-distance models for the procurement of obsidian in Armenia, and created an initial accessibility map based on the provenance of 400 artefacts. Their work identified several factors that could have influenced the choice of deposit (see also Campbell and Healey 2018): the geographical context of the settlement, the distance to the sources (travel time and 'cost'), the quality and colour of the material, the transhumance routes (seasonal movements) and the axes of communication, the diffusion of other materials (raw materials or finished objects), and the social, cultural and economic contexts (i.e., belonging to a specific network). According to their models, the inhabitants of the Urmiah Lake basin, by following the Araxes valley and Naxçivançay river through to Godedzor, could have reached the Syunik source in eight to 10 days on foot .…”

“…• In the incitement to undertake obsidian provenance studies in the first place-as a means to an end or as an end to itself (Freund 2013;Carter 2014;Orange et al 2017). • In the way researchers have approached sourcing studies and managed (or not) to integrate sourcing data in the reconstruction of the chaînes opératoires (Orange et al 2017;Campbell and Healey 2018). • In the disparity in focus between the different regions of the Caucasus and the periods investigated.…”

A Compositional Study (pXRF) of Early Holocene Obsidian Assemblages from Cyprus, Eastern Mediterranean

“…Recent advances (e.g. Ibañez, Ortega, Campos, Khalidi, & Méndez, 2015;Chataigner & Gratuze, 2014a, 2014bChataigner, 1998) in the characterisation of Near Eastern obsidian occurrences, in particular, demonstrate that the geological history of obsidian in the area is extremely complex and our knowledge of specific sources areas remains quite variable (Healey & Campbell, 2018). In order to account for this complexity, I opted to complement my modest geological dataset with reference data sourced from published data on obsidian outcrops (Keller & Seifried, 1990;Gratuze, 1999;Binder et al, 2011;Carter et al, 2013;Chataigner & Gratuze, 2014a, 2014bMilić, 2014).…”

Profiling an unlocated source: Group 3d obsidian in prehistoric and early historic near East

“…However, our evaluation and interpretation of the presence of obsidian from sites which utilised a wide diversity of sources is less well developed, and this is especially the case when a few artefacts from a particular source are present (Tykot 2011;Milić 2016). Sometimes these artefacts may be outliers from other better-known networks (Campbell and Healey 2018;Frahm et al 2016) but in other instances they may be from sources that have simply remained less well documented.…”

“…Obsidian from less commonly used sources also occurs very regularly and may carry its own meanings and social significance. Indeed, the increasing diversity of the types of obsidian in use through time suggests that the exploitation of obsidian from less common sources may be part of a significant pattern (Campbell and Healey 2018). Obsidian provenance analysis is "not simply documenting source histories and the movement of obsidian in its own right (as raw material and/or end-product), but our ability to use the data as a proxy to reconstruct human actions" (Milić 2016, 101).…”