"FLINT SOURCING
Using Laser Ablation - Inductively Coupled Plasma - Mass Spectrometer (LA-ICP-MS) and multivariate statistical analyses on a substantial number of geological and archaeological flint samples, the geochemical signature and variability of Romanian Prut flint and Lower Danube ""Balkan"" flint has revealed the existence of long-distance transfer of Balkan flint into the Eastern Carpathians region over 400 km by EUP foragers. The likely presence of Dniestr flint from the Ukraine in East Carpathian assemblages opens unforeseen research perspectives.
Geochemical sourcing of lithic artefacts from EUP archaeological sites located in Western Belgium (i.e. Grotte Walou, Goyet-upper rockshelter, Huccorgne) away from the primary raw material sources of the Mons Basin, have revealed long-term raw material transfers over 100 km. In Belgium, the identification of lithic raw materials is traditionally limited to macroscopic classification based on visual criteria. This is the first time that prehistoric raw material provenance in Belgium has been underpinned based on measurable geochemical signatures of the raw materials used in the Palaeolithic past.
The importance of chert or flint from secondary deposits (e.g. river gravels) in prehistoric forager raw material economies is generally taken for granted. Yet, most studies trace the origin of the lithic raw materials used in the Palaeolithic past by comparison with rocks from discrete geological formations and geographical localities sampled in primary context. In PALMOBI, the analysis of flint artifact surfaces complemented the geochemical approach in order to address the following question: How to best characterise the primary and secondary environments from which stones used by prehistoric foragers derive? Petrographical and geochemical analyses of geological flint samples of Campanian ""Obourg"" flint derived from ""clays with flint"" from the Mons Basin indicate that cortical, endocortical and internal zones result in distinct geochemical signatures based on LA-ICP-MS measurements. Most of all, our results indicate that that pre-depositional processes seem to have a negligible effect on the reliability of the geochemical fingerprint of the genetic flint type, as long as the internal zone of the sample (i.e. lithic artefact) is being measured.
MOBILITY COSTS
PALMOBI examined the predictive ability of the ""attractiveness of raw material sources"" with respect to terrain difficulty, energy expenditure and other independent variables to understand why some sources were used more than others using a resource selection model. Assuming that (a) present day raw material occurrences can serve as proxies for the prehistoric landscape, and (b) that the number of lithic artefacts found in a lithic assemblage positively correlates with the attractiveness of a source area, changing strategies for procuring and managing supplies of siliceous raw materials from different source locations can be addressed. Based on a Geographical information system (GIS)-driven multivariate modelling approach, first results indicate that terrain difficulty and mobility costs matter and have a better predictive ability than Euclidean distance alone to explain EUP assemblage variability."
