(Press-News.org) An archaeologist at the University of Sheffield has found evidence that, contrary to a widely held theory, ancient Syrians made their stone tools locally instead of importing finished tools from Turkey.
The discovery, newly published online in Journal of Archaeological Science, has implications for our understanding of how early cities developed in these regions and how the geographic origins of raw materials affect developing states.
During the Early Bronze Age, around 5300 to 3100 years ago, blades made of chert and obsidian remained important despite the advent of metal tools. Much sharper than bronze tools, the stone blades were used for various cutting and scraping purposes, including agricultural activities, food processing, and crafts such as pottery and textile production.
Dr Ellery Frahm from the University's Department of Archaeology explained: "There is a prevalent idea that these blades were not made locally in Northern Mesopotamia, what is now Syria. It has been widely claimed that the blades were made in specialised workshops in southeast Turkey and then exported to villages and early cities throughout what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq."
However, Dr Frahm studied the origins of obsidian tools from various archaeological sites, including Tell Mozan where he has excavated, and showed that their raw materials originated from a variety of geological sources across Turkey, not merely those nearest the proposed workshop sites.
Dr Frahm continued: "This diversity of raw-material sources is inconsistent with export from highly specialised workshops in just one area of Turkey. Some of the artefacts' geological sources were hundreds of kilometres from the supposed blade workshops.
"The diverse obsidian origins, when combined with stone tool debris from the sites, suggests local production. Rather than arriving at the cities as finished blades, obsidian instead arrived as chunks, what are known as cores or preforms, and were brought by visitors either from diverse regions or with diverse itineraries. Instead of distant 'industrial' manufacturing, the materials for the blades reached the hands of the cities' specialists involved in household production principally for the local market."
Dr Frahm likens the situation to modern-day Syria: "Domestic manufacturing has been protected from competition by imports. Unlike its neighbour Jordan, there are no McDonalds or Starbucks, and until recently, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and other international companies were banned from Syria.
"When our team headed into town for supplies, the shops had locally produced goods. The chemist had locally made pharmaceuticals and personal care products, while the market had local food and drink, paper products, even batteries. The beer was local too, brewed in Damascus and Aleppo."
This study of millennia-old stone tools also relates to contemporary issues of manufacturing and the uneven geographic distribution of raw-material resources around the world.
"The choice of which raw-material sources to use in manufacturing can have broad societal effects," explained Frahm. "Consider the rare earth elements, or REEs, crucial for electronics manufacturing. Your mobile phone and its battery, for example, depend on REEs to function. Until the 1980s, mines in California were the leading producers of REEs.
"Today, however, China supplies 90 percent of the REEs used in manufacturing despite only controlling one quarter of the world's supply. This is due, in part, to Chinese mines using extraction methods banned in the US. China has repeatedly reduced REE exports by as much as 30 percent per year. As a result, manufacturers dependent on these supplies have had to relocate their factories to China, and it is more profitable for China to export finished products instead of raw materials. This, in turn, has led to a range of geo-political consequences, such as recent American surveys for REEs in Afghanistan."
Dr Frahm sees parallels between REEs for electronics and obsidian for stone blades. The residents of ancient Syrian cities, he notes, imported raw materials like obsidian and locally produced the tools, rather than importing finished objects from distant workshops. He explained: "Knowing where these stone blades were produced allows us to start answering questions regarding the social relations linked to their production and distribution.
"Was there large-scale production under government control, or were the blades made by entrepreneurs working out of their homes? Who had the skills to made the blades, and where did they live and work? There were also effects on activities linked to these blades. Was agricultural output dependent on shipments of tools made by distant labourers, or were the tools made by the farmers themselves during the off season?"
Dr Frahm concluded: "Archaeological research can demonstrate that there are broad societal effects due to our choices regarding which raw-material sources to use and where our goods are produced."
INFORMATION:
Additional information
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440313003518
Department of Archaeology
The University of Sheffield
With nearly 25,000 of the brightest students from 117 countries coming to learn alongside 1,209 of the world's best academics, it is clear why the University of Sheffield is one of the UK's leading universities. Staff and students at Sheffield are committed to helping discover and understand the causes of things - and propose solutions that have the power to transform the world we live in.
A member of the Russell Group, the University of Sheffield has a reputation for world-class teaching and research excellence across a wide range of disciplines. The University of Sheffield has been named University of the Year in the Times Higher Education Awards 2011 for its exceptional performance in research, teaching, access and business performance. In addition, the University has won four Queen's Anniversary Prizes (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007), recognising the outstanding contribution by universities and colleges to the United Kingdom's intellectual, economic, cultural and social life.
One of the markers of a leading university is the quality of its alumni and Sheffield boasts five Nobel Prize winners among former staff and students. Its alumni have gone on to hold positions of great responsibility and influence all over the world, making significant contributions in their chosen fields.
Research partners and clients include Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Unilever, Boots, AstraZeneca, GSK, Siemens, Yorkshire Water, and many more household names, as well as UK and overseas government agencies and charitable foundations.
The University has well-established partnerships with a number of universities and major corporations, both in the UK and abroad. The White Rose University Consortium (White Rose) is a strategic partnership between 3 of the UK's leading research universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. Since its creation in 1997 White Rose has secured more than £100M into the Universities.
For further information, please visit http://www.sheffield.ac.uk
Contact
For further information please contact:
Amy Stone
Media Relations Officer
The University of Sheffield
0114 222 1046
a.f.stone@sheffield.ac.uk
Ancient Syrians favored buying local to outsourcing production
2013-10-16
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Software uses cyborg swarm to map unknown environs
2013-10-16
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed software that allows them to map unknown environments – such as collapsed buildings – based on the movement of a swarm of insect cyborgs, or "biobots."
"We focused on how to map areas where you have little or no precise information on where each biobot is, such as a collapsed building where you can't use GPS technology," says Dr. Edgar Lobaton, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and senior author of a paper on the research.
"One characteristic of biobots is that their ...
Toward a urine test for detecting blood clots
2013-10-16
Detecting dangerous blood clots, which can cause life-threatening conditions such as strokes and heart attacks, leading causes of death for men and women in the U.S., has been a coveted and elusive goal. But scientists are now reporting progress in the form of a simple urine test. Their study, in which they demonstrated that the test works using laboratory mice, appears in the journal ACS Nano.
Sangeeta N. Bhatia and colleagues, including lead author and Ph.D. candidate Kevin Lin and postdoctoral fellow Gabriel Kwong, point out that blood clots — clumps of platelets ...
Light triggers death switch in cancer cells
2013-10-16
Researchers at Cardiff University have created a peptide (a small piece of protein), linked to a light-responsive dye, capable of switching 'on' death pathways in cancer cells. The peptide remains inactive until exposed to external light pulses which convert it into a cell death signal.
Complex mechanisms in healthy cells normally protect us from developing cancer. However, when the finely balanced networks of interactions between proteins that control such mechanisms are disturbed, uncontrolled cell growth can occur.
The Cardiff team has developed a peptide-switch ...
Engine technology on the road to meeting emissions standards
2013-10-16
An engine design appearing under the hoods of many new cars and light trucks today is close to meeting the latest pollution standards that will require vehicles to emit fewer harmful particles over their lifetimes, scientists are reporting. The new study on emissions from gasoline direct injection (GDI) technology appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Matti Maricq and colleagues explain that to meet new regulations, vehicle manufacturers need to make cars both more fuel-efficient and less polluting, which can be a difficult engineering challenge. ...
Maximizing broccoli's cancer-fighting potential
2013-10-16
Spraying a plant hormone on broccoli — already one of the planet's most nutritious foods — boosts its cancer-fighting potential, and researchers say they have new insights on how that works. They published their findings, which could help scientists build an even better, more healthful broccoli, in ACS' Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry.
John Juvik and colleagues explain that diet is one of the most important factors influencing a person's chances of developing cancer. One of the most helpful food families includes cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli, kale ...
University of Toronto research warns against Wi-Fi in cars
2013-10-16
TORONTO, ON – Plans to provide high-speed Internet access in vehicles, announced last month by Canadian telecommunications company Rogers Communications and American provider Sprint Corporation, could do with some sobering second-thought, says a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto.
"Because of the potential for driver distraction, safety should be of great concern," said Professor Ian Spence, author of a new study on the impact of auditory distractions on visual attention. "Many people assume that talking to a voice-operated device ...
Recession's after-effects could lead to cheating and workplace theft suggests new study
2013-10-16
Toronto – We like to think we'd stick to our ethical principles no matter what. But when people feel financially deprived -- as many did from losses suffered thanks to the last market and banking meltdown -- they are more likely to relax their moral standards and transgress to improve their financial situation. They are also more likely to judge other deprived moral offenders who do the same more leniently, says a new paper to be published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
"We found that most respondents did not think financial deprivation would ...
Predicting health risks of everyday chemicals
2013-10-16
Concern over the safety of everyday household products, such as baby bottles and soaps, has spurred a wide-ranging research effort into predicting the health risks of tens of thousands of chemicals. That's the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.
Britt E. Erickson, C&EN senior editor, points out that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged with overseeing the safety of chemicals in consumer products. It's a monumental task — an estimated 80,000 chemicals are on the market ...
Patients with poor nutrition before bladder cancer operation have higher risk of complications
2013-10-16
Patients with bladder cancer are two times more likely to have complications after a radical cystectomy procedure if they have a biomarker for poor nutritional status before the operation, according to study findings presented last week at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Surgeons from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center identified a potentially modifiable risk factor for such postsurgical problems: a low preoperative level of albumin, a marker of the protein level ...
Birds on repeat: Do playbacks hurt fowl?
2013-10-16
PRINCETON, NJ—In the forests of Ecuador, plain-tailed wrens nest in bamboo thickets, singing complex and continuous melodies. Residing nearby are rufous antpittas, small, secretive birds that hop like thrushes and whistle in mossy forests. Together, their songs fill parts of the South American Andes.
Birdwatchers often seek out rare and beautiful birds like the wren and antpitta using "playbacks" – or recordings of bird songs – to draw such them out from their hideaways. But does such babbling-on-repeat harm the birds?
Using the emphatic sounds of both bird species, ...