CHAPTER VII
NEOLITHIC INDUSTRIES
OUR very hasty glance at different aspects of Neolithic culture has shown its marked diversity in different regions. Its essential and fundamental characteristic was the introduction of tillage and cattle-raising, gradually replacing the mere collecting stage of hunting life, and accompanying a steady growth of independence or control of nature’s bounty or stinginess of food supply. This change increased rather than diminished the diversity of culture in different regions. In the rich soil of the loess country and the Danube valley there were genuine farms; in the north cattle and hog-raising probably prevailed, gradually shading over into hunting as one neared the forests. Along the Baltic and the great lakes of Sweden and on all the European rivers fishing was an important source of food. Differences in size, form, and comfort of dwellings tell the same story. In the north we find half-underground huts, probably with shelters of logs or skins in or along the forests. At Grosgartach and in the lake-dwellings and elsewhere we find rectangular houses, veritable homes rather than mere shelters. Primitive man bound the body of his dead with thongs and buried it away in the earth. Then he deposited it in a small stone hut much like his shelter. He enlarged and improved it. Finally the great monument with its circle and alignments seems to have become a temple, and the body, placed in a small cyst or vault, is completely buried, or is burned. These marked changes in burial customs and rites in western and northern, not in eastern or central, Europe, must have been accompanied by changes in the conception of the after life, whether we can trace and interpret them or not.
The same must be said of all industrial products. Every one of them tells a story, if we can understand and interpret it. We are not surprised to find in the late Paleolithic (or early Neolithic) paintings at Cogul women dressed in waist and short skirt not unlike those worn to-day. The dress represented in the idols of southeastern Europe has persisted in the peasant dress of certain isolated regions, especially in Albania, almost or quite into the present.[94] We have noticed the spinning, weaving, and dyeing of the lake-dwellers, and a similar industry was spread all over Europe. The costume of the Bronze period has been preserved in the oak coffins of Scandinavia.[95] We do not know how much it had changed and improved since Neolithic times. The use of wool had doubtless increased greatly. Our northern Neolithic hunters were probably clad largely in skins and furs.
MODERN ALBANIAN PEASANTS IN NEOLITHIC GARMENTS
Two manufactured articles are of especial interest to the archæologist: the stone axes and the pottery. They occur in every settlement. Stone is imperishable, and clay well fired lasts almost as well. They vary according to age, place, fashion, and conditions, and form the foundation for all comparative, “typological” study.[96] Their remains play the same part in archæology as the characteristic fossils, “Leit-fossilien,” in paleontology, not only determining age but throwing light on the migrations, relations, life, and thought of their makers.
The Neolithic period gained its name from the polished stone implements which then appeared. Paleolithic man had learned by long experience the value of flint as the best material for his tools. He had learned to chip and flake it; first by blows, then by pressure, until the Solutrean lance-heads or “points” showed a beauty of form and finish unsurpassed by the best craftsmen of any later date. He had learned to give it a fair cutting edge by small “retouches.” It seems never to have occurred to him to grind or whet the edge of his tools. If the axe thickened rapidly from the edge and was somewhat like a wedge, it was a good remedy against the brittleness of the flint, its great defect; and he put the more strength into the blow. The extreme hardness of flint made polishing very difficult. Most utensils of daily use were not polished at all. Many of the beautiful daggers, genuine works of art, were finished by a uniform, fine flaking down to the close of the period. Flint implements were not polished in Italy, Greece, Spain, and large parts of eastern Europe;[97] they increase in abundance in Scandinavia and England. Other kinds of less brittle but somewhat softer rock were generally used for polished axes.
During the upper Paleolithic period, especially in the Magdalenian Epoch, daggers, lance-heads, awls, and needles were made of bone. For pointed implements, flint, while sometimes used, was far less suitable, except when the point was very short, as in engraving and carving tools. These bone implements were scraped into shape and often well smoothed. It seems but a step from smoothing a bone to polishing the edge of an axe, if not of too hard rock. But the chipped flint axe was very good, and they were accustomed to it. Forrer thinks that the change must have been made where flint was scarce and pebbles abundant.[98]