Scientists map prehistoric mammoth hunters’ mobility by their flints origin

Map of the eastern part of Central Europe, showing the directions of chert and flint import used for tool making to Gravettian sites. Radiolarite outcrops are marked with red stars, outcrops of other cherts, flints, and other fissile rocks with yellow stars. Locations where sampling and elemental analyses will be carried out are marked in blue.
Monday 3 February 2025, 9:45 – Text: Šárka Chovancová

Scientists from the Departments of Geology and Analytical Chemistry at the UP Faculty of Science will map the mobility of prehistoric mammoth hunters who lived in the Czech Republic and Slovakia around 30,000 years ago by determining the origin of their flints and cherts. The scientists will collaborate on this project with experts from the Moravian Museum in Brno and the Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The scientific work is supported by the Czech Science Foundation.

“By determining the origin of stone artefacts that served as spikes, chisels, scrapers, or other tools, we will try to reconstruct the mobility of prehistoric hunters and gatherers from the ‘Golden Age of the Ice Age’,” said Martin Moník from the Department of Geology. Scientists will take samples of glacigenic flints, cherts from the Kraków-Częstochowa Jura (Polish Jurassic Highland) and “chocolate flint” of the Świętokrzyskie Mountains (Holy Cross Mountains). They will also focus on Volhynian flint from the territory of present-day Ukraine, and possibly on flint from central Transnistria.

In the laboratory, experts led by Tomáš Pluháček from the Department of Analytical Chemistry will then obtain characteristic chemical “fingerprints” of the reference cherts/flints and compare them with prehistoric artefacts found in Moravian and Slovak localities, which in the Gravettian period (ca. 34–24 thousand years BP) were inhabited by prehistoric hunters and gatherers – sites below the Pavlov Hills (Dolní Věstonice, Pavlov, Milovice), Předmostí u Přerova, Ostrava-Petřkovice, Moravany nad Váhom, Cejkov, and Kašov). “From this period, we know, for example, of Hungarian and East Slovak obsidian imports over distances of 330 to 400 kilometres, i.e. as far as the localities below the Pavlov Hills, in Napajedla and in Předmostí u Přerova,” Moník pointed out.

Scientists do not rule out that flints from similarly distant localities were imported to the present-day territory of the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the Gravettian period. “For example, in the vicinity of Cejkov and Kašov in Slovakia we directly assume the occurrence of Volhynian flints. However, their origin has not yet been verified by chemical or other methods, something we will now try to change,” said Moník.

The project will result in at least three scientific publications on the mobility of fine-grained fissile rocks during the Gravettian. “We will actually create maps of the movement of the hunter-gatherer populations of the time. At the same time, it will be shown how different the classical phase of the Moravian Gravettian group is in terms of raw materials from the Slovak Late Gravettian localities, i.e. whether it was a continuity or, on the contrary, an independent development,” added the geologist.

To study flint and chert samples, researchers will use elemental analysis using laser ablation coupled with inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). “Studying their colour using UV-Vis spectrometry and macroscopic, stereomicroscopic analysis of the rocks used, i.e. various types of micro- and crypto-crystalline siliceous rocks – chert and flint – may also be useful,” added Moník.

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