Abstract:

This volume has been written in honour of Professor Annelou van Gijn in order to celebrate her distinguished career as an archaeologist and, above all, as an expert in the study of material culture. Annelou started her research with the use-wear analysis of prehistoric flint from the Netherlands, and she extended her interests in every possible direction: time, space, materials and technologies. This volume has been compiled to reflect the broad oeuvre of her work. It focuses on the biographies of a wide range of artefact types made from an equally wide range of materials from Mesolithic and Neolithic Europe, but also glimpses beyond into other periods and geographic regions. The papers focus on different aspects of artefact biographies including raw material acquisition, artefact production, use, and discard, and even the afterlife of objects in our modern society. The objects in question include quotidian tools such as querns and harvesting tools, adhesives that held objects together, and elaborate objects such as maceheads, jewellery, and flint superblades.

Whatever the subject of Annelou’s individual publications, at the heart of all of her work is the love of objects and the stories that they have to tell us. The stories in this bundle are a testament of her contagious enthusiasm.

Contents

A fascination with mundane things. A retrospective of the life and career of Professor Annelou van Gijn
Ben Chan & Annemieke Verbaas

Forty years on: Functional analysis of stone artefacts and the Annelou Van Gijn – Australian connection
Richard Fulagar &Judith Field

Wear formation on shell ornaments: mechanical and actualistic experiments, two complementary approaches
Leïla Hoareau & Sylvie Beyries

Conifer tar in the late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic of north-western Europe
Geeske H.J. Langejans, Diederik Pomstra, Thierry Ducrocq, Antony Haskins & Paul R.B. Kozowyk

Vlaardingen culture or Stein group? From object biographies to communities of practice
Lasse van den Dikkenberg

If flint axes were so valuable, were axe fragments used as ‘small change’? Some insights on the exchange of flint axes and axe-flint in the Vlaardingen settlements of the Dutch coastal region
Rob Houkes

Diverging productions or not? A preliminary exploration of the chemical composition of Neolithic Vlaardingen Pottery
Dennis Braekmans

Colouring the past. Two remarkable finds of Lousberg flint in the Low Countries
Luc Amkreutz & Leo Verhart

A small camp-site of the Late Mesolithic in the Scheldt valley: results of an integrated analysis
Éva Halbrucker & Philippe Crombé

Ask the stones. Harvesting technologies from the Early Neolithic site of La Marmotta (Lake of Bracciano, Italy)
Juan F. Escuela Gibaja, Niccolò Mazzucco, Bernard Gassin, Denis Guilbeau, Gerard Remolins & Mario Mineo

What points can tell. Artefact biographies of barbed bone and antler points from Mesolithic Doggerland
Merel Spithoven, Joannes Dekker & Alessandro Aleo

Reconstructing the biographies of querns within Linearbandkeramik and Blicquy-Villeneuve-Saint-Germain households through technological and use-wear analysis
Caroline Hamon

Object histories in prehistoric Britain: a stone macehead from the West Kennet Avenue occupation site, southern Britain
Christina Tsoraki, Richard E Bevins, Rob Ixer, Nick Pearce, Joshua Pollard & Ben Chan

Flint superblades – biography and function: A case study from Bulgaria
Maria Gurova

Things objects can do. Taking an itinerary approach to artefact biographies for utilizing the cognitive, social and emotional magic of historical objects for contemporary society
Monique H. van den Dries & Yvonne M.J. Lammers-Keijsers