Flint Trade in the Protohistoric Levant offers an in-depth case study of the production and exchange of tabular scrapers. Crossing cultural and ecological boundaries and traded from the desert to the settled zone, these tools encompassed both ritual and quotidian functions over the course of well over the two millennia of the existence of the exchange system.
Analyses focus on the changing nature of the production systems, dynamics of value in changing contexts of production and use, ritual contexts and meaning. Extending throughout the Levant, the tabular scraper complex is compared and contrasted to other contemporary production and exchange systems (ceramics, chipped stone, ground stone, copper, beads), offering a rich picture of the complexities of late prehistoric trade, transcending linear evolutionary frameworks, and simple models. Adopting a chaîne opératoire approach to the use-life of the artifacts, the artifacts can be seen to transform over time and place, made, used, recycled, and ultimately discarded, each stage in its own cultural contexts. The rise and decline of this exchange complex reflects both the geo-political history of the region and the general role of lithic industries in these societies.
Focusing on late prehistoric times in the Near East, the discussions will of relevance to all researchers interested in the role of exchange in the evolution of complex economies. It offers an analysis of exchange systems based on a matrix of factors which should be of interest to all researchers interested in the evolution of trade.
About the Author: Francesca Manclossi is an archaeologist specializing in the study of stone tools in the Metal Ages, from the Chalcolithic to the Iron Age. She received her BA degree at the Università degli Studi di Pisa (Italy), her MA at the Université Paris Oust Nanterre- La Défense (France), and her PhD (with honors) in a joint program between the University of Paris-Nanterre and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel). Her research mainly focuses on one of the most important technological changes in the history of mankind, the shift from stone to metal. She has published more than 20 papers, among which the most significant have been published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, Paléorient and Lithic Technology; she organized a conference during the 2018 UISSP in Paris and she edited the volume Stone in Metal Ages (ArchaeoPress, 2020).
Steven A Rosen is the Canada Professor of Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology in the Department of Bible, Archaeology, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Ben-Gurion University. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and worked as a field archaeologist for the Negev Emergency Survey before moving to Ben-Gurion University full-time in 1988. He has published six books and over 200 professional papers. His most recent book is Revolutions in the Desert: The Rise of Mobile Pastoral Societies in the Negev and the Arid Zones of the Southern Levant (Routledge, 2017).
