Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Friday, August 11, 2000 2:36 AM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Gimbutas.

 

Mark writes:

I remember reading someplace that the slash-and-burn model has been discounted.

Who by? And how? A Late Neolithic (FB) village utilised about one ton of wood per day (Kruk & Milisauskas 1999), and in the surrounding settlement region (ca. 300 km2) there were sixteen such villages. Oaks (which dominated the upland forests) were felled in the first place, and charcoal analyses at Bronocice show how the frequencies of oak (initially very high) decrease in the course of time and those of pine increase. Malacological analyses of FB sites show snails adapted to dry deforested environments. When the FB people learnt to utilise upland soils between river valleys, large areas of forest had to be cleared, and fire does it better than any other method if you only have Late Neolithic tools. The destruction of forests during that period has also been reported from the Netherlands and Denmark.

Mark again:

The subject, however, does bring up some questions. Just how did these pre-bronze Neolithics fell trees for their longhouses? Wood is a wonderful material, but to exploit it properly you need the right tools. Copper axes? Stone axes?

 

This is just speculation, but I would not be suprised if they girdled (cut away a band of bark for the entire circumference of) trees at the base of the tree a season or year before. Once the tree was dead and relatively dry, they may have judiciously applied some fire at the base, using fire instead of an axe to fell the chosen tree.

 

Girdling trees is also a way to create gardens in forests. You leave the dead trees in place, but without the leaves, sun reaches the ground. This is considerably less labor-intensive than felling trees.

The LP and Lengyel settlements already used a lot of oak wood for longhouse construction. Split timbers cut to the right length were used for uptright posts, which shows that those people knew how to work with wood. What tools and techniques they used I'm not sure, but I suppose flint axes had to suffice. Even in Lengyel times copper was too rare in the north (though it was used on a large scale in the Middle Neolithic cultures south of the Carpathians) and most of copper items found at the sites are ornaments (beads, disks, spirals) rather than anything a carpenter could use. Flint mining, on the other hand, was widespread. Large flint mines with deep shafts and underground galleries are known e.g. from Rijckholt (the Netherlands) and Krzemionki Opatowskie (Poland). Axe-production centres have also been discovered. The demand for stone axe-blades must have been great.

 

Piotr