La Réunion "Cailloux"... and some Stone Age "bling"!

The AMGP [Amis du Musée de Préhistoire du Grand-Pressigny]
hold a Réunion "Cailloux" two or three times a year.

The first of this year was on Saturday 11th January in the recently opened HQ...
last year, it was held immediately after the AGM [or CAG!]  and, I feel, better attended.

At these events we can get the finds from the garden....
for us, mainly from the potager...
identified as to whether or not it's just a "cailloux"...
or actual worked stone.

We must be getting better at spotting the real items...
or...
was it because we were working on our hands and knees so much this year...
or are we filtering better...
but we had a much better proportion of positives...
a small scraper [grattoir] that also resembled a lion's head,
a couple of drills [perçoirs],
a flake off a polished flint that had then been reworked as a small sickle blade.

Two perçoirs... probably of different periods...
the one on the left is like my hole enlarging drill... stepped.
The one on the right looks to have had a flake taken off the central ridge...
probably to afford extra grip.

Also a pair of bi-face flint tools...
a chisel...
an almost microscopic flake that was the leftover from working a tool by 'pression'...
that is, working the edge by pressing hard against it with a bone or wood point...
done on opposite faces, alternately, it leaves a slightly wavy, but extremely sharp, edge.

Two different biface axes or choppers...
again, age is unknown...
but these tend to be Mesolithic or older.

But more about these in later posts...
there were two wonderful things brought along...
a vitually intact polished stone axe that was so little used...
that the three stages of polishing were clearly visible...
fairly coarse at the point for mounting it into the wooden or antler shaft...
highly polished with sand or flint dust for most of it, giving the classic shape [but showing striations]...
and, finally, 'sur polir' [super polished] at the blade tip...
polished using a mix of very fine sand / flint powder and grease in a groove on the "polisoir"...
this gave a non-striated, glossy tip to the piece....
it looked wonderful, but vanished back into the owner's pocket before I had a chance to take any pictures!!

I didn't make that mistake with the second item...
a collection of what can only be described as Stone Age "bling".

M. Geslin, the chairman, was given a collection of stone "tools"...
crafted in jasper...
when on the society's field trip to Brittany this year.
The word "tools" is in inverted commas here because these items were for show only...
perfectly formed, they are far too fragile to be used...
they are full of fracture lines...
and other faults caused by inclusions...
they would have blown apart if used for real.
But, to look at, they were wonderful...

These two shots are of the opposite sides of the biggest biface "axe"...
the axe is on the right... a piece of raw jasper is on the left.
If you look at the upper picture (by clicking on it)  you will see the fracture lines
mentioned above.

The full collection looked like this....

The axe above is in the top right corner with the raw jasper beneath...
the steel ruler gives scale.

These were for trade, ceremonial and political use, funerals, etc.
For trade, they could be exchanged for goods with somone who wanted a bit of "bling"...
politically, they could be given as gifts...
to ease passage, calm a situation...
ceremonially, they could be "framed" and worn...
or laid out in a certain form to show rank...
for funerary use, and buried with the corpse, they would have shown status...
both rank or wealth!

This is the reverse side of the small biface axe at the bottom right of the collection above.
The script in Indian ink shows where it came from.
The purple veins in this jasper are rather wonderful, I think.

Whatever the use of these, they would have been highly prized.

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The pictures could probably be better... but I am still perfecting technique!