Mining of lithic erratic raw material in the Polish Lowland in prehistory - a precedent or common practice?

• Main Author: Chachlikowski, Piotr
• Other Authors: Marciniak-Kajzer, Anna, Andrzejewski, Aleksander, Golański, Adam, Rzepecki, Seweryn, Wąs, Marcin
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Instytut Archeologii UŁ, Łódzka Fundacja Badań Naukowych, Stowarzyszenie Naukowe Archeologów Polskich 2017
• Subjects: prehistoric archaeology; stone raw materials in prehistory; Fennoscandian erratic stones; Polish Lowland; mining in prehistory; lithic archaeology; Fennoscandian
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10593/26256

Stone raw materials were actively procured by the inhabitants of the Polish Lowland in prehistory by way of intense exploitation of the local resources of Fennoscandian erratic boulders and pebbles and – on a very small scale – by gaining “imports” from the areas rich in stone resources. A particularly abundant source of stone for these communities were boulders and pebbles deposited in the form of rock block assemblages that constituted the so-called Pleistocene pavements deposited by the continental glacier in forms of numerous formations of the early glacial landscape. These local assemblages of erratic stones formed a rich and, at the same time varied in terms of their available assortment, reservoirs of raw material useful in the prehistoric stone production, and also finding their application as building material. The more and more source-documented examples prove that the societies that inhabited the Polish Lowland in the past exploited rock material largely by way of mining exploitation of appropriate (in terms of lithological and size-related features) rock concretions from among the pool of erratic stones that formed the local glacial pavements. The relics linked with prehistoric mining of stone pavements in the Lowland do not belong to the category of unprecedented objects on the archaeological map of the polish Lowland any more. On the contrary, the assumption may be that this method of raw material procurement was relatively common among the societies that inhabited in the past the areas covered by the last Pleistocene glaciation. 369 387