Ancient stone goods found across France may have been made by skilled craftspeople in what is now Paris, who traded along vast networks.
Around 7000 years ago, long knives, bracelets and other stone goods fashioned by skilled Parisian crafters were reaching people hundreds of kilometres away, via complex trade networks that are now being mapped for the first time.
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| Stone long blades found in Belgium Soléne Denis |
By combining archaeology with computer modelling, Solène Denis at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Nanterre and Michael Kempf at the University of Basel in Switzerland have reconstructed the lengthy and winding paths taken to supply people from what is now Normandy to Belgium with goods from the greater Paris area.
“Certainly there were local markets, but what we also see are products made by people who have specific skills that not everybody has,” says Denis. “Especially with long blade production, people in Belgium and elsewhere just didn’t have the skills.”
Scientists already knew that stone goods created in the Paris basin had arrived as far east as the Liege province in Belgium and as far west as the border of Britanny in France. They had also gone south to the Loire valley. But such destinations only tell a small part of the tale, says Denis.
“Now we’re making new hypotheses, finding out that, oh, they had to go through this or that site, and connect with those people through friendly exchanges in their homes,” she says.
The pair looked at the distances between previously established archaeological finds, such as long blades made from silicite or bracelets made from schist and serpentine, and the raw materials used to make them. The researchers also considered critical landscape information like waterways, forests, altitudes and environmental data that could suggest the possibility of hunting or gathering food, combining all of this into a computer model.
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| A computer model showing how Stone Age trade networks may have spread Michael Kempf |
“If you want to go from Point A to Point B, it might make sense to go straight, but it could also make sense to go a bit to the right, a bit to the left, because, you know, there are people you want to ‘have coffee with’, so to speak,” says Kempf. “What we’re doing is trying to combine these sociocultural and environmental perspectives.”
In particular, the pair examined information from 133 sites spanning from about 5000 to 4650 BC. Combined, the data provided fodder to develop the networks of where traders might have originated, travelled, dropped off their goods and spent the night benefiting from local commodities.
The findings show that – especially for the long blades and bracelets – many of the goods originate within a few dozen kilometres around modern-day Paris, says Kempf. Indeed, starting at about 4950 BC, what is now the greater Paris area became a strong source of skilfully crafted long blades in particular.
Trade networks reached about 250 kilometres to the north-east and about 200 kilometres to the south, where the untamed Loire river may have dissuaded commerce. The more easily navigable Seine river appears to have promoted trade, especially in the final two centuries studied. The networks also reach 400 kilometres to the west, halting due to the difficult hills of Brittany and possibly competition from other craftspeople, as the model suggests another, non-overlapping trade network in this region, says Denis.
The work presents important insight into the way Neolithic networks in Europe were formed, based on the availability of resources and the technological challenges of the time, says Michael Frachetti at Washington University in St. Louis.
While the findings make sense, computer models don’t necessarily take the full picture into account, says Ivan Jadin at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels. “There are lots of hypotheses about what happened at the time,” he says. “Now they just need to be supported through further study.”
Journal reference
Quaternary Environments and Humans DOI: 10.1016/j.qeh.2024.100014