Tracing the Materiality of Feathers in Stone Age North-Eastern Europe

Autor: Kristiina Mannermaa, Tuija Kirkinen
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol 28, Iss 1 (2020)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1102-7355
2002-3901
DOI: 10.37718/CSA.2020.02
Popis: The use of feathers in ritual costumes and everyday clothing is well described in ethnographic sources throughout the world. From the same sources we know that bird wings and feathers were loaded with meaning in traditional societies worldwide. However, direct archaeological evidence of prehistoric use of feathers is still extremely scarce. Hence, feathers belong to the ‘missing majority’: items that are absent from the archaeological record but which we can assume to have been of importance. Here we present microscopic analysis of soil samples from hunter-gatherer burial contexts which reveal the first direct evidence of the use of feathers in the Mesolithic period of north-eastern Europe.
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