Abstract:
Hooked – Fashioning Fishhooks in Mesolithic and Neolithic Scandinavia (8000-2400 BCE)
Anja Mansrud1, Morten Kutschera2
1 Archaeological Museum/University of Stavanger (Norway)
2 Freelance replica specialist, Norway
Throughout the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Western Scandinavia, fishhooks were fashioned with osseous materials like bone and antler. HOOKED is a collaborative project aiming to gain new knowledge of these technologies, by using actualistic experiments. In this paper we present our experimental work on bone fishhooks from Mesolithic and Neolithic coastal sites in Western Norway, Eastern Norway and Western Sweden. Experiments with different osseous materials (elk, red deer and roe deer metapodials and red deer ribs) combined with analysis of artefacts and bone debris, reveals regional and chronological variations in raw-material use, CO and the time and skills required to make fishhooks. This indicate that fishhook manufacture is embedded in persisting traditions that are chronologically, culturally and geographically defined. The presentation further discusses the use of experimental approaches to gain novel understandings of temporality and the social organization of everyday craft. The collective and communal aspects of tool production are often disregarded in experimental archaeology. The vital role played by social transmission in traditional crafts and the large number of interrelated tasks involved in fishhook manufacture and use, such as assessing osseous and lithic raw material, disarticulating bones and making blanks, extract sinews or gather plant materials for making lines etc., enable us to portray prehistoric life as a community of individuals crafting together.