Hunter-Gatherer Bone and Antler Implements in Lithuanian Coastal Area: Recent Studies in Chronology, Technology and Decoration Patterns

Abstract

Stone Age bone and antler implements are an essential study material, as they contain important information on hunter-gatherer tool making technology, dynamics in hunted animal species, choices of raw materials and much more. Some specimens have unique engravings and incisions on their surface, enabling the studies of the decoration patterns. Moreover, organic finds can be dated by radiocarbon, allowing to approach osseous technologies from a chronological aspect. The Early and Middle Holocene sites containing hunter-gatherer bone and antler implements in Lithuanian coastal area have been discovered and investigated in the last century. The Middle Holocene osseous collection, however, has been studied only recently, shedding light on the manufacturing techniques and chronology of the tools. This paper summarizes the combination of technological, radiocarbon and decoration data of osseous implements found in Palanga and Smeltė sites, as well as the single finds (ca. 6000–3800 cal BC) discovered along the coast of Lithuania.

Socketed antler toggle harpoon head – a unique hunter­gatherer fishing implement in western Lithuania’s freshwater lake environment

“…10: 1-2). These T-axes are considered among the oldest in the eastern Baltic, with similar examples found at the Melnragė II beach (Lithuania) and the Sise site (Latvia), dating to the end of the 6th millennium cal BC (Zagorska et al 2021;Rimkus 2022). The T-axes at Daktariškė 5 were made of red deer antler beams and were widespread among Late Mesolithic societies in the western, southern and southeastern Baltic regions.…”

“…5: 1), resulting from the removal of the antler cortex. The removal technique for tool manufacturing is also known on one of the adzes from the Smeltė site, located in coastal Lithuania (Rimkus 2022;Rimkus & Daugnora 2021). This tool was dated to 5894-5721 cal BC (Piličiauskas et al 2015), indi cating that this removal technique was employed much earlier than the dating of the toggle harpoon head from the Daktariškė 5 site.…”

T-shaped antler axes in Lithuania : previously unrevealed Middle Holocene hunter-gatherer technology

“…Subsequent direct dating studies of the remaining bone and antler artefacts from the site suggested that they fall within a relatively short chronological period of ca. 4400-3800 cal BC (Rimkus and Daugnora 2021;Rimkus 2022).…”

“…There are very few directly dated red deer remains from the Boreal in Lithuania, with only one bone found, in middle layer B of the Kabeliai 2 site (Ostrauskas 2002). However, recent data on bone and antler dating from Lithuanian and Latvian coastal settlements (Palanga, Sise and Smeltė sites) show an increase in red deer hunting during the Atlantic period, the number of different types of tools made from their antlers, and the presence of waste products in settlement layers (Zagorska et al 2021;Rimkus 2022). In inland Lithuania, apart from the above-mentioned case of the Kabeliai 2 site, there are also less data, but one antler adze has been directly dated to the Atlantic period at the Kaltanėnai site, eastern Lithuania (Piličiauskas et al 2020).…”