Revisiting Carpathian obsidian

Archaeological interest in sourcing obsidian artefacts has increased exponentially since Renfrew’s ground-breaking work with Aegean obsidian (Renfrew et al. 1965; Aspinall et al. 1972). Although Mediterranean obsidian has received the lion’s share of attention, sources in Central and Eastern Europe have recently become the focus of characterisation efforts. This is timely—Carpathian obsidian was first exploited during the Middle Paleolithic, and was traded widely throughout Europe during later times (Williams Thorpe et al. 1984, Kilikoglou et al. 1996). Identifying Carpathian sources of obsidian artefacts may therefore provide data on human cultural interactions ranging from social boundaries to resource-procurement patterns over a considerable period of time. Despite increased international collaboration aimed at characterising Carpathian obsidians (Bigazzi et al. 1990; Kilikoglou et al. 1997; Oddone et al. 1999; Constantinescu et al. 2002), advances in understanding of the archaeological significance of Central and Eastern European obsidian sources have been hampered by difficulties of language and access (Kunov et al. 2003; Biró 2004; Ryzhov et al. 2005)