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It is well known that many Mesolithic and Early Neolithic sites have been recovered duringthe past century in the Iron Gates region (Eastern Serbia). The application of diverse analysison human remains and artefacts raised many questions, but also offered new ideas about thetransitional period in the middle and lower course of Danube. New methods and studies ofthe artefacts enabled the researchers to have a look at the everyday life of the hunter-gatherer-fishermen groups who inhabited the area during Late Glacial and Early Holocene. Communities in Iron Gates consumed fish and exploited the bank in the prehistory. This isvisible in the results of isotope analysis done on the human individuals implying that they fedon aquatic resources, in some periods more than in others. Fish remains were also found in thesettlements and based on the iconography present on the sculpted boulders and other artefacts,the bond between the people, river, and eco-system was compelling. The idea of this communication is to present the possible fish working using chipped stone toolsin the Iron Gates region during the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. The traces are observed byvarious methods, having in mind how hard is to detect activity specific as fish processing. Theanalyses consisted of both low- and high-power approach combined with FTIR analysis. The experimental approach has also been applied as a usual procedure in the use-wear analysis.A couple of experimental sets were done on the larger fish, like common carp (Cyprinus carpio)with an idea to reproduce use-wear traces on chipped stone replicas. Diverse activities as scaleremoval, hide working, organ removal and filleting were done. In the case of experimental tools, FTIR analysis was of additional help to test the tracing of chemical elements that could beconnected to activities on diverse fish parts and organs. Finally, the experimental results represented by macro traces and polish are being comparedto the use-wear traces found on the archaeological sample. Traces of filleting, butchering anddecapitation found on the bones were also compared to the ones found on Lepenski Vir, Vlasacand Padina site. This combined and specfiic study helped us understand the processing of fishin the prehistoric period in detail, from the tool selection to the hide tanning. |
