Using Radiocarbon Dates and Tool Design Principles to Assess the Role of Composite Slotted Bone Tool Technology at the Intersection of Adaptation and Culture-History

Abstract

Slotted bone tools are an iconic example of composite tool technology in which change in one of the components does not require changing the design of the other parts. Commonly, slotted bone tools are seen through the lens of lithic technology, highlighting organizational aspects related to serial production of insets, reliability and maintainability. In this framework, slotted bone tool technology is associated with risk aversion in demanding environmental settings. Here, we provide the first overview of radiocarbon-dated slotted bone tools in northernmost Europe and the East European Plain, including 17 new direct dates on pitch glue, and show that the Late Pleistocene to Middle Holocene period of inset slotted bone tool use in this area shows marked variation and idiosyncrasy in associated lithic technology against a trend of continuously warming climate. We suggest that historical specificity and path-dependence, rather than convergent evolution, best explain the variability seen in slotted bone tool technology in the studied case, and that slotted bone tools in general formed an organizationally flexible, adaptable and hence likely adaptive technological solution that met a wide variety of cultural and technological demands.

Living through changing climates: Temperature and seasonality correlate with population fluctuations among Holocene hunter-fisher-gatherers on the west coast of Norway

“…The meeting between small migrating groups (Manninen et al, 2021b) would have resulted in significant fitness benefits to increases in population size and densities (Allee and Bowen, 1932), all the while temperatures continuously rose, seasonality decreased (Figure 5) and the Fennoscandian ice-sheet continued to melt (Stroeven et al, 2016). Moreover, groups would have had the possibility to receive or imitate technological innovations such as the reduction of microblades from conical blade cores (Sørensen et al, 2013) or the slotted bone point (Manninen et al, 2021a) through increased inter-group contact (Damlien, 2015, 2016; Günther et al, 2018; Kashuba et al, 2019). Together, these new ideas would help prevent subsistence risk and allow access to new ecological niches, as testified in the use of the rock-shelter of Saevarhelleren (Bergsvik and David, 2015).…”

Stone Age imitation of a slotted bone point from Pärnu River (south-western Estonia)

“…The most intriguing feature of this point is undoubtedly its form, where the bonecarved object is mimicking slotted point technology. This specific composite object technology, where flint insets are attached to a bone or antler core to form sharp edges, appeared in the eastern part of Europe no later than the middle of the 14th millennium BC (Manninen et al 2021, table 2) and was used in eastern and northern Europe until the beginning or even middle of the 5th millennium cal BC, as demonstrated by the youngest sites with slotted points from the Moscow region in Russia and from Estonia (Jaanits et al 1982, fig. 40;Lozovskaya & Lozovski 2015).…”

“…Many technological reasons can be left aside for the bone point originating from the Pärnu River. According to the AMS-dating, the Pärnu point was made at a time when slotted point technology was widely used (Manninen et al 2021) and it was neither a novel nor disappearing technology. The main raw materials -bone for the core, flint for the insets and birch to produce tar for attaching insets -were also locally available.…”

Bone Points in Time: Dating Hunter-Gatherer Bone Points in the Territory of Lithuania

“…7600-7000 cal BC. However, recent direct dating of slotted bone tools from the sites in Estonia (Kunda Lammasmägi, Pärnu River, Ulbi) and northeastern Poland (Tłokowo) suggest that this technology was already present in the early 8th millennium cal BC, whereas the youngest dates fall in the middle of the 6th millennium cal BC (see Manninen et al 2021 for the summarized data). Still, most of the radiocarbon dates fall in the 8th millennium cal BC (Figure 7).…”