Neolithic man and the Iceman. Let's not re-write our textbooks just yet!

Great Debates
1

Last night’s programme on discovery highlighted the Iceman who has gained much notoriety over the years as being the most well preserved ‘mummy’ ever found. From an Archaeological point of view, Ötzi (this is what they named the iceman. pronounced ootsy, or utsey) is a gem of a find. Clothing, tools, weapons, all was intact and found with the body.

Briefly, last night’s programme tried to find the exact method by which Ötzi was killed. It is generally accepted by most researcher’s, including chief specialist, Dr. Eduard Egarter Vigl, that Ötzi was killed by another neolithic man. Shot in the back by a ‘war arrow’ he was also stabbed several times, and he bled out, almost entirely (which is why his body was preserved so well)

But of particular interest was his axe. Not made of stone but of Copper. For a man who lived 5 1/2 millennia ago, this was pretty interesting. This forces old beliefs back 500 years prior to when we thought people of that region had that technology.

To me, as an archaeologist, this find is of special note. I’ve done my fair share of research on neolithic culture especially in and around the Britons, but also in Austria and Finland. The copper that Ötzi’saxe was made of was of a special variety, oddly pure and the precision of it’s make, points to more of a status symbol, and less of a garden variety sort.

Stated in the programme, Ötzi may have been higher up the status ladder than previously thought. But what about the timeline. 5350 is the official time for the age of Ötzi’s remains. This is around the time Stonehenge was originally begun, a little after. What this say’s about the timeframe is quite fascinating. If the technology came that much earlier than thought, what does that say about our (human) capabilities on a whole for that time?

Of particular importance, what does it say about the culture of the time? I often think of what someone was probably thinking when they were experimenting with extracting a metal from stone for the first time. What made them think to do it? What drew them to the stone in the first place, almost certainly the colour of the metal showing through. Ötzi was traveling, be it away from something or towards something in the Italian Alps, it is my assertion (and many others) that technology of the time was developed simultaniously in different areas. Otherwise why did Norseman in the north, Egyptions in Africa, neolithic man in Europe, Aztec’s and Maya in South America, pre-Xia Dynasty in China all have metals fashioned at around the same time?

**BTW, if this is choppy, it’s because I am doing 5 things at once and writing this…

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The Native Americans in my region made “cold hammered” copper tools and jewelery. I’ve often theorized that refining techniques may have began with a copper tool accidently dropped in the fire. Once they saw how the molten metal resumed a new shape when cooled, they would have realized its properties and potential.

What drew them to the metal in the first place was their love of beauty, I think. Even in the simplest stone tools in our collection, there’s a subtle artisty. Just like us, they prized the pretty and the unusual. Not to mention, of course, the versatility of the material itself. There is evidence, on some of our stone tools, that copper points were used to make fine chips and serrated edges.

I know that European and Native American cultures differed in many things, but in curiosity, innovation and cleverness, people are the same. It’s really amazing how sophisticated they were.

3

The Neolithic was simply a period when the people of the time worked with the natural resources without yet realizing what could be done with smelting metal. Flint and obsidian, for example, have useful properties that sandstone and granite do not – and they capitalized on them if they were available (flint usually, obsidian only in certain areas).

There’s a hotly debated classification of time – after the Neolithic, before the Bronze Age – referred to as the Chalcolithic. If one accepts this idea, there was an extended period when native copper was recovered and used for tools – but as a “stone,” a naturally occurring substance with special and useful properties that could be capitalized on, not as a “metal” (i.e., something that can be extracted from ore which can be melted and shaped into tools in a quasi-molten state). Granted that from our own perspective, native copper is indeed a metal, look at it from theirs: we have this neat reddish-brown stone that can be sharpened to a point or blade that will cut almost anything, doesn’t break or dull easily… Anything flint will do, this stuff will do better.

4

Except that flint is sharper!

It’s been a while since I saw that docu, but I seem to remember that Ötzi’s ( pronounced Ötzi, not ootsy, with an ‘u’ as in ‘burn’) hair had traces of something indicative of frequently being involved in smelting. Was it arsenic?

There are many axe finds all over the region and they all look rather the same. A lot of them burried as hoards. This indicates two things a)they were highly regarded b) there was extensive trade and contact in the Neolithic period.
Metal must certainly have been viewed as something magical, just imagine how a shiny polished axe would look compared to common ordinary materials. That too might explain why these axes were highly coveted, not just because of their utilitarian value.
The situation is somewhat similar to Bronze-age longsword finds. They too indicate that trade, in that period, was much more widespread as often believed.

5

People tend to neglect the taphonomy of tools. Yes, copper tools in archeological sites are very rare…because copper tools were almost never thrown away. Copper is infinately recyclable. The copper axes that Ötzi’s contemporaries used didn’t survive, because their grandchildren melted down the axes to make something else.

So we can’t look at archeological sites and naively assume that what we find is typical of what people at that time used. The sites we find are typically literally garbage, stuff thrown away. Or they are burial sites, which may or may not represent typical technology in their grave goods. Or they are disaster sites, where structures were destroyed. All these sites have their own taphonomy that guarantees that they aren’t a naive snapshot of history.

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Actually, the whole reason Ötzi is so well known in the archaeo-scientific community is because the site was so undisturbed and free from naivitee! Nothing he was carrying was thrown away, or disguarded for any particular reason. It is essentially the perfect archaeological site…

I wish I was on that excavation team…

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I saw that show last night, too. I’m a bit annoyed that this information hasn’t been ublicized better. Much of what they talked about last night is in a book I lucked into when I visited Ireland , published in 1995 (and, AFAIK, still not available in the States). It’s The Man in the Ice, by Konrad Spindler, the Ditrector of he study, who was interviewed on-camera for that show. (The book was publshed by bWeidenfield and Nicholson in 1994, and as a Phoenix paperback th next year)

The book has plenty of color photos abd drawings of Otzi and his equipment – information not gone into on the too-brief TV show.

It was traces of arsenic in the Icemans hair that suggested he was a smelter. His axe had a composition of 99.7% copper, 0.22% arsenic, and 0.09% silver. It was “probably made of local copper”, judging from this makeup, probably gathered in the form of malachite or azurite crusts.

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From what I’ve seen of the folks heading up that team, no, you don’t want to be there. You’d quickly want to put that unusually pure copper axehead to a non-ceremonial use.

“WHAT?!?!? Did you pull that theory out of your ASSHOLE?”

As for the purity of the copper, I’m blaming extraterrestrials.

And technology doesn’t need to develop simultaneously. Archeologists forget that all of Europe and Western Asia is just a few months’ walk away from any other part, at least the nice parts. For all we know Ötzi was an itinerant tinker or a Johnny Smelterseed, showing folks how to make neat stuff. For a price, of course. People like him could have spread the technology to people who could use it, had ore available to them, and were far enogh from starvation to afford to spend time and manpower trying new things, in the span of a few years, which seems simultaneous from our distance.