Neolithic bow drill component?

[sandbender]

An article on the BBC where archeologists in Israel reckon they have found some very early bow drill (or hand drill?) components.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19168047

 

[Toddy]

Very good
There's a bit missing though...........if these are indeed ceramic, then that implies pottery techniques that were supposedly not invented by this time.
Interesting to hear how she works that one out.
We have wooden hearth boards, and we know that wood on wood works very well.

I'm a little dubious tbh
Happy to be proven wrong, but if the Neanderthals had ceramic technology.........


cheers,
M

 

[sandbender]

"...I'm a little dubious tbh ..."

I share your doubts, interesting though, when I read it I wondered if the region was lacking in suitable bow drill materials and having moved there these folk came up with another fix, it does seem unlikely though.

 

[Harvestman]

On the other other hand the previous diagnosis was "phallic symbol".

As I understand it, that's archeologist-speak for "I haven't got a clue what this is"

 

[Dartmoor navigator]

Happy to be proven wrong, but if the Neanderthals had ceramic technology.........

It was Neolithic not Neanderthal. The Beaker folk started in the late Neolithic. They had pottery, hence their name.

 

[Toddy]

The implication from the report is that since similar items are found elsewhere, and from earlier periods, that somehow they too have managed ceramic technology.

We find hearth boards, we don't really have the ends of the spindles recorded. Perhaps that though is because excavators, who do not themselves use the technique, don't realise that the wee charred ended bit of stick is actually part of the fire lighting method, and not part of the fire debris.

Thing is too, hole boring sometimes leaves similar marks to fire making on a drill end. Not always, if it's been used with fine gravel to grind through stone, it doesn't. Pump drill tips ?

Interesting though.
What else would we drill ?

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Elen Sentier]

Interesting ...

 

[Stringmaker]

The implication from the report is that since similar items are found elsewhere, and from earlier periods, that somehow they too have managed ceramic technology.

We find hearth boards, we don't really have the ends of the spindles recorded. Perhaps that though is because excavators, who do not themselves use the technique, don't realise that the wee charred ended bit of stick is actually part of the fire lighting method, and not part of the fire debris.

Thing is too, hole boring sometimes leaves similar marks to fire making on a drill end. Not always, if it's been used with fine gravel to grind through stone, it doesn't. Pump drill tips ?

Interesting though.
What else would we drill ?

cheers,
Toddy

There may be something in that.

I was running a session with field archaeologists a while back and one of them asked me about chalk as a bearing block having seen the bow drill set I used. He had found numerous pieces over the years with conical wear depressions in them but hadn't made the connection.

Either way, it is a fascinating debate.

 

[CedrikG]

That is amazing ... really

 

[lannyman8]

i have seen big timbers drilled just like the bow drill to make holes so pilings could be lashed together when making buildings out on the water, i forget what the buildings are called, and that would have been a much later period too of course, i believe the buildings where common in Scotland, out on a jetty...

makes for an interesting debate though... i wonder if people will still be talking about us in the same way in hundreds of years?????

 

[Toddy]

Crannogs and we have them reliably dated to the Neolithic. We know of over 600 that have been reliably identified, but the indications are that there are perhaps thousands more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/crannogs/

cheers,
M

 

[Dartmoor navigator]

Ooo ther's one of those at Llangorse Lake, South Wales. Brecon Museum have a whole section on it (I believe it was no later than bronze age though?). Fascinating stuff.

 

[Toddy]

They're all over up here, and not just in the lochs either. We have riverine and esturine ones too.
Loch Olabhat is definitely neolithic, and the crannogs are always adjacent to good farmland.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[lannyman8]

ah, there we go earlier than i thought, but the one i had in mind with the drilled posts where later, i think???? it was a time team special (i know sad me ) but it was another interesting lesson from the past of how people live and make things....

 

[S.C.M.]

hmmm...maybe they weren't the whole spindle, but a spindle extender, with a lump of wood on the bottom to do the actual ember-making, if there was a scarcity of straight, dry wood, which might have been fine for hearthboards. Just a thought that popped into my head.