Animal teeth as amulets in the Bronze Age Period

Mesolithic Horizons Papers Presented at the Seventh International Conference on the Mesolithic in Europe Belfast 2005, 2009

Two perforated dog molars were found directly associated with a Kura-Araxes child burial from the third millennium BC in Armenia. Both teeth show trimming of the root ends and boring of a biconical hole through the lingual root with a hand-held stone tool. Expedient manufacture, the anatomical location of the hole and use-wear suggest that the molars were suspended in order to display their crowns as part of a necklace that also included two stone beads. This is an unusual type of personal ornament and the first of its kind reported in the South Caucasus. Its use in a Kura-Araxes burial is interpreted as an active modification of the funerary symbolism during this period.

BEAUTY AND THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER: personal adornments across the millennia / edited by Monica Mărgărit and Adina Boroneanţ., 2020

Kisköre-Gát is a significant site of the Hungarian Late Neolithic Tisza culture. A settlement and a cemetery with at least 37 graves were found before dam construction works. Excavations were directed by J. Korek. Altogether, 32 graves were assigned to the Tisza culture and yielded a rich assemblage of personal adornments made from hard animal materials placed with the deceased in 12 graves. Real and imitation red deer canines, usually combined with limestone and shell beads, strung together to form chains decorating the head, neck, breast or waist, were found in eight graves, while Spondylus bracelets were placed in seven graves. Although the site has been known for decades and scientific publications on the material is available as well, the finds made from hard animal materials were evaluated on a subjective, typological basis alone and their manufacturing characteristics and raw material identification have never been studied in a detailed manner by a specialist. The object biography and construction of these necklaces based on a low magnification study will be presented in this article.

13th ICAZ International Conference, Ankara, Turkey 2nd-7th September 2018, 2018

The Maros (Moriš) culture of the Early Bronze Age was widespread in the southern Carpathian basin, around the confluence of Tisza (Tisa) and Maros (Moriš) rivers. In Serbian part of Banat, two large cemeteries were excavated in the 20th century: Ostojićevo and Mokrin. The burials were usually equipped with diverse grave goods: ceramic vessels, metal jewellery, metal weapons, and also relatively large amount of ornaments made from osseous raw materials were discovered. Osseous raw materials were very diverse; they included bones, antler segments, teeth and mollusc shells from several species, possibly both fossil and fresh. Strict raw material choices for specific artefact types can be noted: small ruminant metapodial bones for beads, while perforated teeth were almost exclusively dog canines, with rare occurrences of red deer canines or horse or cattle teeth. Despite common presumption that the metal ornaments had greater value because of the raw material, and that the osseous ornaments were simply „cheap substitutes“, these two necropoles prove otherwise. These ornaments display long use, sometimes were even repaired, suggesting they were valued and perhaps even had some symbolic significance. Use of mollusc shells in different stages of preservation, some even heavily damaged and fragmented, as well as presence of copies of pendants in white stones, suggest that the osseous ornaments had the value of their own right, related to their physical properties, in particular shiny, white colour, and/or for the attributes ascribed to the animals from which they derived.

In the archaeology of hunter-gatherer societies, features such as kinship-based affinities as well as other groupings based on age, gender or special commitments might be reconstructed based on the study of tooth pendants associated with burials. Further insight would be obtained if these combinations could be followed diachronically. An excellent site for both synchronic and diachronic analyses is the cemetery at Zvejnieki. There are about 2400 mammal teeth – both with and without artificial modification – that have a position in the graves indicating an aesthetic and symbolic meaning. One aim has been to get an understanding of how the teeth were modified in order to fit into garnets – the techniques of pendant manufacture. Another aim was to classify use-wear in order to obtain information about the use of pendants. The pendants from altogether forty-two graves have been studied. Through detailed study of the tooth pendants from Zvejnieki, one gain an interesting perspective on values, norms and structures constituting the Mesolithic and Neolithic societies.

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2020

This article presents the results of a zooarchaeological, technological and functional analysis of a collection of animal tooth pendants from the Subneolithic sites in Šventoji, Lithuania. The technological research carried out on the artefacts showed minimal interference in the material and the use of three basic techniques for drilling the holes. Traseological research of the use-wear traces legible on the pendants established a long period of use and was a premise for making inferences on the likely differences in their way of use. These inferences were tested with an experimental programme testing different ways of wearing pendants and with different types of strings. The article also presents the results of the analysis of the spatial distribution of pendants of different types at the site Šventoji 23. The discussion compares the results of the analyses carried out with the results of studies of other European collections of animal tooth pendants of similar chronology.

In this paper will be analysed ornaments made from osseous materials from two Middle Bronze Age cemeteries in present-day Vojvodina (northern Serbia), the sites of Mokrin and Ostojićevo. Ornaments consist of pendants made from animal teeth and mollusc shells, applications from diverse materials, beads from long bones, decorative needles made from bones, etc. The deposition into the graves represented the final stage of their life, and their life biographies display interesting patterns and modes of circulations on different levels – on the level of raw materials and finished objects, short-distance and long distance exchanges. Some of the raw materials were obtained locally, within the settlement (such as dog canines or diverse bones), in the vicinity of the settlement (red deer canines, for example) or from long distances (Dentalium, Glycymeris shells, etc.). The objects themselves also display diverse life biographies – while some were heavily worn, even repaired several times, some display very little usewear, and appear almost new. The former may have been inherited, while the latter were almost new at the moment of deposition. These patterns of circulation and exchanges create multiple inter-crossing networks and their place within these communities, importance, later meaning and social significance will be discussed.

Documenta Praehistorica, 2019

The Necropolis of Chirnogi-Suvita Iorgulescu (Calarasi county) was located on the high terrace of the Danube and was investigated by Done Serbanescu (in 1989) by means of the archaeological excavations carried out for the construction of the Danube-Bucharest Channel. For this study, we analysed the archaeological assemblage preserved in the Museum of Gumelnita civilization from Oltenita (Calarasi county) coming from 10 graves, out of a total of 58, which are attributed to the Gumelnita culture (the second half of the 5 th millennium BC). The personal adornments are mainly bracelets made of Spondylus valve (16 specimens) which appear in most of the graves, along with an equal number of perforated plates made of Sus scrofa canine, this time the pieces being grouped into two graves. The funeral inventory is complemented by small cylindrical, tubular or biconvex beads, made of various raw materials: Spondylus valve, bone, malachite, coop-er and green slate. At the technical level, attention is drawn towards the technological transformation scheme of the raw material, which is extremely uniform for the two main categories of ornaments. Also, the analysed pieces showed different degrees of use-wear, demonstrating on the one hand that they were worn before the deposition in graves, and on the other that the accumulation of these items took place over time.

Zooarchaeology BEYOND FOOD 2nd Faunal Interest Group Symposium, 2021

Diverse skeletal elements (bones, antler, teeth, mollusc shells) were widely used for production of diverse artefacts since the Palaeolithic times. They were used for everyday tools and hunting and fishing weapons, but they were also frequently selected for making of decorative items, because of their physical and mechanical properties, but also because they had some symbolic value. In this poster will be presented decorative items made from animal skeletal elements from the Neolithic period in the Balkan area, with special focus on the Early and Middle Neolithic Starčevo culture and Late Neolithic Vinča culture. Although stone and clay were used for jewellery as well, main raw materials were those of animal origin. Analyses of the raw material selection, typological repertoire, as well as symbolic aspects will be explored. Teeth from both wild and domestic species were used for making simple pendants. Bone and antler were used for making diverse buckles, decorative pins, pendants, and some of the ornamental pieces produced are quite extraordinary, in terms of labour, skill and time invested in their production. Particularly interesting is the presence of ornaments made from imported mollusc shells, which were certainly symbols of status and prestige. Ornaments made from osseous raw materials were usually used for long time, sometimes repaired and recycled. Osseous raw materials were chosen for their physical properties – hardness, smooth surfaces and bright, shiny white colour. They also had symbolic value, perhaps linked with these properties, rarity and/or origin from certain animal species. This symbolic value is difficult to reconstruct; it is possible they were used to display individual status and prestige.