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Jan Apel and Kjel Knutsson
valuable cultural historical interpretation of the social complexity of the Late
Neolithic period in Scandinavia.
Polish Neolithic. Although this appears in the middle period of the Linear
Pottery Culture, it is foremost connected to the development of the TRB tra
dition, a tradition that also enters Scandinavia at this time. Migal aims to show
a connection between wine production and blade making by an anticipated
use of a grape pressure device to make blades. The blade technology is inter
and graves, seem to have been important not so much as a practical tool dur
ing this time but as part of societal ritual reproduction (Knutsson, H. 2003).
The possible metaphorical connection between wine and blades are thus a
topic that could be fruitful to investigate.
period. From being embedded in everyday activities on sites during the Meso
lithic, it moves over to the sphere of the sacred where the sites of production
are hidden. No doubt the special technical skills needed to produce regular
pressure blades and punch blades must have been connected to and related to
another skill, the conceptual skills and knowledge related to social and/or cul
tural reproduction. We see a continuation in this type of ritual technology in
the Middle Neolithic Battle Axe Culture in Scandinavia (Knutsson, H. 1999).
et
al.
skill in relation to technologies that appear to have been carried out in an
chipelago. The technology consists of a rudimentary platform technique con
ducted with a hard hammer, but there are noticeable differences between the
sites, and production experiments are conducted in order to explain these dif
a simple technology as depending on a lack of skill. Rather, this choice must
be understood in social terms.
The preservation of the remains of lithic technologies makes them espe
cially appropriate for the study of the development of skill, crossing the bor
der between the long sweep of evolution and history. In the book we meet
research covering the history of choppers from the Acheulean to the Late
Neolithic. This is an opening up for an exciting discussion of the evolutionary
history of hominids and the equally interesting development of cognition and
“the historical mind” in cultural reproduction.
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