Obsidian - Black Stuff Revolution
In the process of developing and making Göbekli Tepe to Stonehenge, we're lifting the corner of the carpet on all sorts of aspects to do with the Neolithic period that we perhaps would not have otherwise.
And so it is with the topic of this discussion - obsidian: we had absolutely no idea how crucial this 'black stuff' was to the spread of farming from Anatolia and the fertile crescent into Europe until really examining the narrative of how the early pioneers first ventured out in to the Aegean and crossed to mainland Greece.
Our research has turned up all sorts of surprises and we hope you all enjoy this brief overview of the power of the trade in obsidian.
Transcript
Hello everybody, a very warm welcome to the Quebec Tabute to Stonehenge podcast. I'm Michael Bott.
Rupert (:Yes, and I'm Rupert Suskin, so welcome all.
Michael (:And yes, we are the prehistory guys. But of course, you've worked that out already, I'm sure. The Gebeklitepeter Stonehenge podcast, it's a bit of a sidebar to the huge major project that we have in progress at the moment, which is a film called Gebeklitepeter Stonehenge. I'll probably say that more about that in a little while. But in the thing is in the process of making that film.
And in doing the research, we're lifting the corner of the carpet and all sorts of aspects to do with the Neolithic period that we perhaps wouldn't have done otherwise. So we have this strand on the channel to delve a little deeper. So it is with the topic of this discussion. We're going to be talking about obsidian. We had absolutely no idea how crucial this black stuff was to the spread of farming from Anatolia and the Fertile Crescent.
into Europe and its importance to prehistoric archaeology in general until we were researching for this film. That's pretty much the size of it isn't it, Rupert?
Rupert (:Absolutely. It's actually quite staggering how widespread the passion for this extraordinary material was, and quite how widespread it was, the fact that it was traded over such vast distances. And that's essentially what we're going to be talking about today, and how the extent of that trade had such an impact on...
everything that happened subsequently, thousands of years of influence.
Michael (:Trade is the word, but we'll come to that crux of the matter a bit later on. But obsidian, everybody's heard of obsidian, but we've got to talk about what exactly obsidian actually is first, I guess, to make sure we're on the same page with everybody. Yeah, which one of us is best qualified to launch into that sort of little exercise?
Rupert (:Well, we don't need to be technical on it, do we? It's volcanic glass, basically. If you love Game of Thrones, it's dragon glass. But yes, it is just a glass material formed through volcanic activity. And it is the sharpest material.
Michael (:No, no, no. Yeah.
Michael (:Yeah.
Rupert (:on the planet. It can be worked to literally a molecule of thickness on the cutting edge. So it's sharper than surgical steel, which is extraordinary really.
Michael (:Yeah, I think the only reason I think that it isn't used often as surgical steel, I think it's banned by the FDA in the US of A is because relative to steel and steel, you know, it is far more breakable. So you don't want, you know, in surgery, you don't want bits breaking off, but it is sharper than the sharpest. Yeah.
Rupert (:I'm sorry.
Rupert (:Absolutely. No, but there is also the side aspect that you can take a piece of steel and you can put it in a steaming, sterilising oven and if you did that with obsidian for well, probably more than once, it would just break into pieces.
Michael (:Oh, sure, yeah.
Michael (:Oh, goodness gracious, I didn't realize that aspect of it, which is strange considering its source. You know, it is lava, basically, lava flow, which has cooled very rapidly. That's, I think, the defining thing that... Yeah, yeah.
Rupert (:Yeah, kinda. Yeah. But it is extremely brittle, that's the thing, which is why it can be knapped to such extraordinary sharpness. But there you go. So yes, that's Obsidian in a nutshell.
Michael (:Hmm
Michael (:So, saying of course that it's dependent on volcano activity to exist in the first place, that rather limits the number of places from which it must be obtainable. And as I think as we'll go on, you know, without listing every single one, there will be certain areas that will be mentioning that limit
Rupert (:Yeah
Michael (:the sources of the kind of obsidian that we're talking about to some quite narrow areas. I think that's about it as far as... it's the only thing we missed. I mean that's so broad, but we're of course are talking about...
Rupert (:It's broad by necessity though, really.
Michael (:Yeah, yeah, otherwise we'd get bogged down a bit, yes. But obviously the areas we're going to be talking about and you know, David to Stonehenge, we're starting off in Turkey and prehistoric Anatolia and moving west. So it's the sources that were available to these people, not just in the Neolithic though, but earlier into the Mesolithic and available to the people we sort of lump under
label of hunter-gatherers and, well, there's a little term that we're beginning to challenge even more and more and you'll find out more about why we're doing that, I think, because this podcast progresses for various reasons. So, shall we go on to talk about obsidian in prehistory? There's one more general point, I think, to make that.
is it's a sort of overarching thing about obsidian. It's become very, very important to archaeology in general. Do you want to outline why that is, Rupert? Before we get into the details of who, what, and why in the Mesolithic and Neolithic.
Rupert (:Uh...
Rupert (:It depends. Are you talking about the patrology?
Michael (:Well I'm talking about the ability for the petrology to be done on obsidian because it has characteristic fingerprint petrological aspects to it, which means that it's source, once you find a piece of obsidian, you can tell, if you've got all the right equipment and the right skills, you can tell pretty much precisely which source it came from.
Rupert (:You can, and it's remarkable really when you see the extent of the petrology where sometimes there are different sources that look quite similar overall petrologically, but the lab technicians, and this is mind-bogglingly brilliant work, but they can then go into other trace elements and I can't remember what they are off the top of my head, but
but they can then pick different other trace elements and match those up to specific sites, which is why they can tell that in some cases, you know, there were just hundreds of miles from the source deposits. It's remarkable lab work that they do, actually.
Michael (:Yeah. And it wasn't until the 1960s, and I think Colin Renfrew and one other was at the forefront of this in a paper that was published in 1968, that for the first time the study of obsidian from known archaeological sites in Anatolia was able to prove
that far from these villages isolated and dotted all over the place, far from them being isolated, they must have been trading with each other because of the instance of obsidian from sources hundreds of miles away. Before the study of obsidian, you couldn't tell, you couldn't say
Rupert (:Yeah.
Ahem.
Michael (:one community was talking to another, one village was talking to another, the other side of the hill necessarily. But not only with the city can you say, well, they're obviously talking to them just over the other side of the hill, but they're also communicating with people hundreds of miles away.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Rupert (:Yes, it's an astonishing statistic that out of all the prehistoric villages that were excavated in the Near East, that of the tools that they found in these villages, 80% of the tools were obsidian, with 20% just flints. And that statistic stood for that start.
for 150-200 miles from the source deposits. And it was only after about 200 miles that the percentages of obsidian tools began to drop off until you get to, a good example is Jericho, which there were still some obsidian tools there, but mostly flints. But the thing is that that's 500 miles from the nearest...
obsidian deposits. So, you know, even 500 miles away they're still accessing it. It's quite remarkable.
Michael (:Yeah, yeah, it is. And the thing is, once you've got a network, once you've got something that's not forcing, but is a engine that has people moving about, then you've got an engine that provides exchange of ideas. So that if one thing takes off in one place,
then you get things taking off in places not too far away, almost at the same time. And so there's a kind of gel, gelling effect that this black stuff and the networks that it created, not just in Anatolia, but further afield, as we'll probably touch on later.
But it provides a different context for looking at how things developed and ebbed and flowed in the area of the Fertile Crescent and at that time, all to do with farming, development of farming and other aspects.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:It's an interesting stat as well when you say at this time and it's a good point to make. Something I found quite surprising was that if you go back 11,000 years then obsidian was there, but it wasn't hugely used. It certainly wasn't in general use. And then fast forward a thousand years, 10,000 years ago.
Michael (:Hmm
Rupert (:Obsidian is everywhere. Everybody's using it. So in that thousand year period there was clearly this you know this realization that this material was just better than everything else and then this booming network where People I mean what was the mechanism? What was the trading mechanism? Although, you know the bartering or whatever
Michael (:Hmm. Hmm-hmm.
Rupert (:you know, that you could travel from your local source of obsidian and take it hundreds of miles away or, you know...
Michael (:Yeah, all right.
Michael (:Yeah, well, that's a question we've been asking for ever in a day since I was pointing a camera at you at the top of Pica stickle in the yeah. Up in Lactyl X factory. Yes, that's another story. We get a bit ahead of ourselves. But you just said, you know, a period of time 1000 years from 11,000 years ago, i.e. 9000 BC to 8000 BC. That's what you meant, isn't it?
Rupert (:It is. It is. Yes. The Langdale X Factory. Yes.
Rupert (:the
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:Um, so yeah, that's a little, very general portrait of, uh, things in Anatolia. Um, but the thing is not only was, um, obsidian known of being used and being traded in that period in the Neolithic, pre-pottery Neolithic, all that stuff.
But it is also known that obsidian was being traded and used and being quarried, shall we say, by Mesolithic people, i.e. people we would refer to as hunter-gatherers, much earlier than that, going back 13,000 years, I think, certainly in the Aegean.
area we have proof of that although you say I think in Northern Europe and there are there is evidence of obsidian traveling huge distances even before that.
Rupert (:Certainly there's a Siberian, obsidian found in Siberia. There are various sources for that, but they have found, for example, there are two key sites for obsidian in Japan, that a lot of the Siberian obsidian came from Japan, going back to this sort of period in time. So the thing is that the vast amount of archaeological
research done that we find in the West. Anyway, it's very West-skewed. We don't know that much about the Far Eastern sources. There's a certain amount we know about the Far Eastern deposits of obsidian, but it's not something that we know about in the archaeological record, really.
Michael (:Yeah, there was more the date I was interested in for the Siberian obsidian going back and placing it within the mesolithic, you see. Exactly.
Rupert (:Oh, okay, well, it's... 16,000 years is the oldest that I know of off the top of my head, but... But then... It's old enough.
Michael (:Yeah. But what I'm saying is by placing that date of obsidian in Siberia at that date, 16,000 BC, yes, correct me if I'm wrong, or as we 16,000 years ago.
Rupert (:I can't correct you if I'm wrong, I'd have to go back to the paper to be 100% certain.
Michael (:Nevertheless, a very long time ago, the thing is the obsidian was coming from a long way away. Okay, so these are people that we would otherwise call hunter-gatherers and yet they must be engaged in trade networks and talking to people a long way from the other side of the hill. So there's a certain sophistication going on.
Rupert (:the
Michael (:already deep into the Mesolithic. You know, this sort of thing is changing the character with how we view hunter-gatherers, but bringing it straight back to the Aegean and the importance to us of obsidian in the spread of farming. The earliest record I think there is of obsidian in the Aegean
dates from 11,000 BC and it comes from a cave in Greece, well I forget the name of the peninsula, Argosid Peninsula, I think it's that. It's only about two and a half hours drive from Athens down there but it's the other side of the peninsula from the Adriatic if you see what I mean. But
obsidian from an island called Milos, which you'll hear mentioned many, many times from now on in this podcast, was found in the Franchethe Cave, which is actually something a bit more than a cave. It's a vast sort of shelter, hollowed out by the waves and the sea or whatever by erosion. It's a lot more than just a hole in the side of a cliff.
Rupert (:Yes, you will.
Michael (:put it that way, is enough under this covering for a community to live. But the point is they had Milesian obsidian from the island of Milos there 11,000 years ago. Okay, now getting obsidian from Milos means undertaking a sea journey of I think about 75 kilometers.
Michael (:something like that or is it miles even? I think there are reasonable routes which involve island hopping but nevertheless here again we're talking about people we call hunter-gatherers and yet how in the first place did they know? Because Milos was not inhabited at all until the mid to late Neolithic.
So they're going to an uninhabited island and taking the trouble to get this stuff and bring it back. And of course, and to the rest of mainland Greece. At that time...
Rupert (:Yes, and there are aspects to this which are particularly important. It's very easy for them to go unnoticed really, but if you can go back that far and find that obsidian from very specific sources was being preferred, then you've already gone through a period of history where people were establishing that this location provided a better quality.
than this location. And so already, 11,000 years ago, they're prepared to take maritime routes. They've got seafaring routes in order to supply or to get the better quality obsidian. That in itself is quite remarkable.
Michael (:Absolutely. But to be fair, I think there are only two other sources. All the sources in the Aegean and the Mediterranean are island sources. There are no mainland sources in that area. Oh, yes, I was going to say, until you get onto the mainland Turkey, which is a different story entirely.
Rupert (:Although the Anatolian sources... Yes. So people could have been, as just a common thing, almost on a daily basis, people could have been exchanging the land-based sources, you know, the mainland-based sources, if you like. It was still the fact that when people discovered this extraordinary quality, that it became the preferred and travelled...
crazy distances over time, didn't it?
Michael (:Yeah, yes, but there are only two other sources in the Aegean available to those people that were inhabiting the Fransley cave, and they are known to be inferior sources. You know, now they are anyway. But yeah, the point is, though, that in Mesolithic times they already had trade networks going and operating over, you know, quite considerable distances at sea.
Rupert (:In the agenda.
Rupert (:Uh-huh.
Rupert (:care.
Rupert (:Yes.
Michael (:How that came about, we do not know. Maybe have something to do with the tuna that they were fishing, which requires going, you can't stick a fishing rod in the sea and have it from the mainland, from the beach, and hope to catch tuna. You have to be intentional with a decent boat going out to sea to catch tuna, and they were. How, whether that's got something to do with the discovery of obsidian, we don't know.
From our point of view, and here's where it gets interesting, is that by the time that, and we're talking after, Gavetli Tepe we're talking about, after Çatalhöyük even, which incidentally is a sidebar, is another study as far as obsidian is concerned, Çatalhöyük, because although it was getting its obsidian from central Turkish.
sites and maybe some from Albania, that sort of area. But we're talking about after as farming proper had got going, the trade networks from the hunter-gatherer people in the Adriatic were already going in gyratory and people were going places.
So when farming got going in southern Turkey, in southwest Turkey, on the coast there, you begin to see Milesian obsidian from Milos appearing in the coastal farming settlements and villages in that area in Turkey. They're not getting their obsidian so much from
their own sources in Turkey. They were getting it from Mila. So they must have been engaging with the people in the Adriatic that were already sailing around and getting the stuff. So they're engaging with the hunter-gatherer people. The farmers are engaging with hunter-gatherers. So that's a very...
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:What's the way? Trite way of putting it. Because we've got to adjust that hunter gatherer thing. But the point is that when hunters, when the farmers engaging with these people that were already sailing the seas, that's it is reckoned and we pay lip service to it. That farming crossed the Aegean for the first time and ended up
Rupert (:It's
Michael (:in Greece and spread from into the areas of Thessaly and further up into the Balkans and up into what's now Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, etc. from that time. And we think it's the circulation of obsidian in the Adriatic that first caused that breach to be made of farming people to...
cross the sea and get into mainland Europe. Anything to add there, Rupert?
Rupert (:To add to that or to move on I know I don't think we need to add to that you put that very succinctly really I think it's an interesting thing, you know people trading you know you mentioning the maritime stuff so people in the Aegean Arriving in places, you know by boat that it's something that we know from later Prehistory that actually
travel by boat was in many ways a lot faster and safer than travel by land. And so to have people arriving by boat at all these coasts or maybe little fishing settlements and what have you, it's no real surprise that people bringing obsidian from Milos would have arrived at the western coast of Turkey.
more readily than people travelling by land from some of the eastern obsidian deposits in Turkey. You know, it would have been quite a lot quicker to come by boat. So I think that's got a lot to do with it as well.
Michael (:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Michael (:Yeah.
Michael (:A little factoid here, the first Neolithic farming settlement known in the Aegean is on Crete and actually directly below the palace of Knossos, deep down, when they dug down down, they found the first Neolithic settlement dating to 7000 BC.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:Interestingly, the cave, Franskli Cave, which I mentioned earlier, which is on the coast there, that is a hugely important archaeological site. The implications of what have been found there stretch way beyond what we've been talking about here, because it has been occupied for such a long time.
that it's got a real stratification of many thousands of years of use, which is why you were able to get the 11,000 year old obsidian there in the first place. But on mainland Greece, Franchethe Cave also contains the first evidence of farmers being there. It's got the first wheats and emas and domestic cereals.
in that cave as well. So, you know, Fransthie Cave, we could do a whole program on Fransthie Cave, I think, and probably will when we get back from the next bit of filming for Gobekli Tepe to Stonehenge. So I think it's probably a moment, just take a moment and I'll say some words about that.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yes.
Michael (:Okay, I'm going to put an insert in here, Rupert, to say some... okay. Yeah.
Rupert (:Sure. Gathered, yes. So yes, we will most definitely be talking a lot more about that. It's interesting, something that we can never really avoid is that so much of our knowledge is based on what has been found, what has been excavated, and we still don't know what is lost. So this is a picture of the past that is, you know...
put together from the tiny broken pieces of jigsaw puzzle that we find. So it would be interesting. Do you know what? It's an interesting point, or a good point, to say that one of the other really solid pieces of evidence that we have, you know, if you think from an archaeological point of view, that we only have
what has been found. So anytime somebody says this is the oldest blah, well no, it's the oldest that has been found. It's the oldest that we know of, it's not quite the same thing. But when it comes to genetics, then we can tell from analysis of ancient DNA that the farming in the West, we do know that the earliest farmers did have
Michael (:Yes.
Rupert (:basically Greece and Aegean ancestry. Now the jury is very much out on where they came from, but it can be said with absolute certainty that the farmers in Western Europe originated in the Aegean. Over what period of time? We can't say with 100% certainty, but that's where they kicked off. So essentially all the farming that we know about
did start in the Aegean and move west.
Michael (:Now, I can't say, you know, what the drivers took farming sort of north-west into Europe and up the Danube, but we can reiterate the point about obsidian being a major cause and enabler of the spread of farming, as it seems that the same sort of
thing was going on in the Mediterranean, because there was a Mediterranean strand of the Neolithic going on. So farming sort of split into two routes, if you like, one up the Danube and into Northern Europe and one along the north coast of the Mediterranean. And it seems that the same sort of thing was going on in the Mediterranean, because in the Mediterranean, I think there are
Rupert (:Hmm.
Michael (:four islands that are sources of obsidian in a sort of little circle around the Tyrian Sea, which is a sea just off the west coast of Italy, between Italy and Sardinia there. Sardinia is one of the sources of obsidian there, and I've forgotten the name of the other three islands. But you've got evidence in the Mesolithic.
of the same sort of thing going on. There was trade going on. Obsidian was turning up in all sorts of places that they shouldn't in that area along there. So when farming spread that way, again it was seems to be been taking advantage of trade and fishing and whatever routes that had already been pre-established by so-called hunter-gatherers.
in the Mesolithic that the whole spread of the card, the impressed where the cardinal where people as they went, as they went further west was accelerated, shall we say, by this system that already pre existed. So the question mark in my mind, sorry, Rupert, I was just going to finish the question mark in my mind is a what sort of stuff were
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Hmm. I'd say in my own head... Go on.
Michael (:hunter-gatherers really up to? What sort of society did they really have? And what sort of interaction was really going on between the first farmers and the hunter-gatherers? You know, was it one of resistance or of cooperation, trade, interaction, mutual benefit? Who knows? All question marks. I'm sorry I interrupted you.
Rupert (:No, it's a curious thing. We know that there were these two strands of the movement of farming coming west. And as you mentioned, there's the site coming down through the Mediterranean, the site, the line, if you like, coming down through the Mediterranean, and the other going up through along the Danube and spreading waste across the land.
Michael (:Yeah.
Rupert (:spreading its way across the land. Now I personally, I like to imagine it being that the southern route, these are the seafarers, these are the people who, you know, they've spread these ideas travelling, you know, port to port to port to port, whereas the people who took the Danube route, these are people who are...
Michael (:Yeah.
Michael (:Yes.
Rupert (:more comfortable travelling across land. They know the places that they're going to stop and the people they're going to visit along the way. These two different cultural sources and we can see that's something that's continued through history. Whether you've got, say, the Silk Road later on where people travelled for thousands of miles trading specific things.
along that route as opposed to, you know, you look at all the maritime trade of whether it's metals, you know, we know that, you know, coming much later, so for example, the oars that were taken from Cornwall into Europe and things and vice versa. So it's a very different mentality whether you're a seafaring folk or a terrestrial folk. So I think that that's where the...
Michael (:Okay.
Rupert (:that the main differences lie. But what would they have been trading? They wouldn't have just been traveling with Obsidian. What else would they have been taking with them along the way?
Michael (:Well, well, that we've got to come to our imaginations and what people do trade in because the other items, the perishables, well, they're perishable. The clues in the name will never know about them, you know, whether it be textiles, cloth, foodstuffs, wood, you know, artifacts made of perishable materials. We'll never know about that, which is why this black stuff is so.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:precious as an indicator of what people were doing in this very early period in our history and in the Neolithic. And as we'll see, as we'll probably do more, there will certainly be stuff in the film and we'll certainly do more about this later. The same thing pertains to when it comes to polished stone axes, those that have particularly come.
from the Alps, the jade type stuff, the similar kind of networks must have sprung up then when polished stone axes became a thing and things of very, very high value. I think we've run our course as far as obsidian, as far as we know about obsidian for the time being. Oh, go for it, yeah.
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:Yeah, there's one other thing I'd like to toss into the mix though, and that's that coming much later, we do know for example, particularly when metals started being brought into use, that Obsidian as a tool started to lose its, the preference really, because it was easier to make metal tools and use those. But people were still using Obsidian for...
Michael (:Yeah.
Rupert (:precious items, so they would make ornaments even, you know, there are plenty of obsidian ornaments that were still being used. And even to the extent that they have found, archaeologists have found not a whole one, but a large piece of a table that was made out of obsidian. Now Lord knows the size.
Michael (:Oh sure, yeah.
Rupert (:of that lump of volcanic glass that they started off with to make a table. But the thing that I wanted to point out was that unless you have a context, or in fact, even if you do have a context, archaeologically, you could dig up an obsidian artefact at a site and you can date the rest of the site from, whether it's charcoal, whatever, you can date the rest of the site to whatever point in history. But the point is that obsidian, that object,
Michael (:That's ridiculous.
Rupert (:might actually have been traded and passed down hand to hand for, we have absolutely no idea how long. There could have been really quite attractive obsidian artifacts being exchanged for a very, very long time, and the archaeological record wouldn't necessarily fill in the blanks of, you know, those bits of information. That's all I wanted to say.
Michael (:Yeah, I think you make a good point because I think it's something we need to underline before we leave it, and that is, if we haven't done before, and that is the value and the utility of obsidian. I mean, aside from the artifacts that later came into use when metal became available. And I think the tell... I'm sorry, this is a bit of a pun. Well...
Rupert (:Hmm.
Rupert (:That's shameful
Michael (:I think the tell for it is in the obvious importance and the high value that it was obviously given, particularly at Chattel Hoyuk, because there one of the mysteries of Chattel Hoyuk is why so much obsidian was hoarded. The great caches of the stuff, unused, you know, as if they're put aside for a rainy day, you know, or as if...
Rupert (:Mm.
Michael (:It was a kind of bank. You've got an obsidian bank almost for you. So you could never say you weren't in danger running out of obsidian. Because, of course, obsidian probably has a very short usage life. It's easily breakable. So, so, so useful because of how sharp it is in.
Rupert (:Mmm.
Rupert (:Yeah, too brittle, yeah. Yeah.
Michael (:you know, microblades, knives, saws, whatever, arrowheads, of course, you name it. But I just thought I'd underline, you know, what you said just now, you know, and the value in its utility is quite a, made it quite a precious thing in those times. And by extension,
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:a very powerful driver of what people were up to. I think I will have called this or sort of labelled the thumbnail for this podcast on YouTube the Obsidian Revolution and I think it's fair enough to stand by that and give it its proper level of importance in the
Rupert (:That's fair.
Rupert (:Yeah.
Michael (:the study of the early days of the spread of farming and in prehistoric archaeology general. And with those words, I think it is time now to say bye and hope you enjoyed our little discussion of the black stuff there, Rupert.
Rupert (:Indeed, indeed. So, yes, well, we'll see you next time, folks.
Michael (:Yeah, look forward to that. Don't know what it'll be about, but keep your eyes open. Yeah, and thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Bye bye for now.
Rupert (:See you.
Rupert (:waiting to cough for ages.
