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2010-12-24 04:59:57   •   ID: 1012

Bifacial Flint Artifacts from the early Bronzeage in Eastern Europe

Figure 1
These are two sickle -like artifacts and a flat and broad dagger, made of the same black flint (partially with a bluish patination). They were found during the early 20th century in what was at this time the Russian part of Volhynia.

Crescent-shaped flint sickles, though not infrequent in south-eastern Poland and western Ukraine, tend to be stray single finds, and were very rarely recovered from hoards-indeed these three artifacts of this post are also single finds.

The flint is fine-grained and very homogeneous. One of the “sickles” could have functionally served also as curved Dagger. This sickle and the Dagger are finely knapped by pressure retouch and maybe by heat treatment. The third artifact is rather an advanced preform of a sickle.

Microtraceology has demonstrated that such bifacial tools were used in multifunctional settings, for example as coulters, tools for cutting sods or reeds, or as multifunctional knives for processing plant or animal raw materials.

In Volhynia and south Poland, large bifacial artefacts, similar to the specimens here, have spread in the Bronze Age cultures of Mierzanowice and Gorodok-Zdolbitsa around 2,2 k.a.-1,6 k.a. BC.

Provenance: Collection Popov; St Petersburg (RU)



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