Rekem:
a Federmesser Camp on the Meuse River Bank by Marc De Bie and Jean-Paul
Caspar
Instituut voor het Archeologisch Patrimonium
& Leuven University Press. 2000. 2 Volumes (225 pages & 265 pages).
123 figures; 115 plates; 154 maps. ISBN 90-7523-013-4.
It is, perhaps, easier to state what is disputed about the Federmessergruppen,
than what has been established in its fifty year history. These enigmatic
sites may date from Dryas III or alternatively they are restricted to
the Alleröd interstadial; they may have arisen indirectly from
Magdelenian groups, or directly from the later Hamburgian complex; they
are either contemporaneous with the Crewellian in northern continental
Europe, or they are distinct from it; their settlements are either small
compact scatters, or large dispersed spreads of lithic material; and
ultimately they may have evolved into the Ahrensburgian techno-complex,
or perhaps they moved south to develop into the Azilian. Cases, of varying
strengths, have been made for all of these statements and several others
besides. What is generally accepted is that Federmesserguppen
is a Late Glacial stone tool complex characterised primarily by curved-backed
points, end scrapers and burins which is found across lowland northwestern
Europe, from France to eastern Germany. In the popular mind Federmesser
is, perhaps, synonymous with the lithic scatters at Meer (Van Noten
1978, Cahen et al. 1979; Otte 1994), but there are over a hundred
other Federmesser scatters currently known, most of which have not helped
to clarify the situation. In short, any source of new information on
the Federmesser complex clearly has to be heartily welcomed.
This two-volume monograph
on the Federmesser lithic scatters at Rekem, situated on the left back
of the river Meuse, near Maastricht, promises much in this respect and
yet delivers little. This is in no way meant to detract from the work.
It is a remarkable achievement, well written and structured and sumptuously
illustrated (the second volume is entirely dedicated to illustrations,
plates and maps). It is simply to say that the physical conditions at
Rekem preclude any meaningful development of the questions raised above.
This is primarily a lithics report, and as such it is valuable contribution
to the study of lithics in general, and Late Glacial lithics in particular.
General readers, and those more interested in cultural aspects of the
period may be less well rewarded.
Early on in this book
the authors make the point that it is perhaps best read by shifting
from section to section, such is the sheer volume of information that
is being presented. This is sound advice. The Rekem site comprises fifteen
distinct loci of stoneworking activity, and various attributes of these
scatters are presented and discussed across seven chapters. Picking
one of the loci and following its analysis through the chapters is a
good way to understand the complexity of the site. The opening chapter
sets the research context of the Rekem site, with a useful, if brief,
summary of the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic cultural sequence
in the Benelux countries, and an acknowledgement of site formation processes.
So often introductions of this type can be skimmed through in a full-on
charge for the data. However, in this case readers would be well advised
to pick through some of the definitions and methodologies that are described,
since they are of importance in later chapters.
Environmental and
chronological data are presented in Chapter Two. Those hoping for some
new and much needed environmental and chronological insights for the
period will be disappointed. Rekem is on a sandy subsoil and, despite
thorough excavation and a barrage of post excavation tests that include
pedological, pollen and phosphate analyses little in the way of solid
environmental data emerges. There are no faunal remains or macrofossils
preserved, no significant variations in phosphate were observed and
a possibly disturbed pollen profile pointed only tentatively to Dryas
III. As far as chronology is concerned thermoluminescence and AMS dating
were both carried out, the results proving equally tentative. Only a
single C14 can be considered reliable - on resin adhering to a curved-backed
point – which returned an age estimate of 11,350 ± 150
BP (OxA-942). This places Rekem within the Alleröd interstadial,
a position perhaps more in keeping with other Federmesser sites than
Dryas III. The remainder of the AMS dates (on charcoal) and the eight
TL estimates produced widely divergent age estimates. Infra-red analysis
of part of the resin used in OxA-942 yielded no evidence of the make-up
or treatment of this substance other than heating.
Chapter Three details
the non-flint assemblage, which comprises mostly quartzites, sandstone
and lesser amounts of quartz. All of this material must have been brought
to the site, since unlike the flint, it is not locally available. A
number of the larger stones had clearly been used as tools of some sort
or another, ranging from obvious hammerstones and other ‘heavy
duty tools’, to spokeshaves and grinders. There was also a small
number of red ochre fragments, almost half of which had polished facets.
In terms of their distribution, the authors note some spatial arrays
of stones that might indicate hearth areas or, in one case, tent weights.
Perhaps, wisely they play down these conclusions in this chapter, although
in Chapter Six, on the spatial analysis, they repeatedly refer to hearth
areas, despite a lack of secondary burning features, such as discoloured
sediment or charred materials associated with them.
A general typological
analysis of the Debitage assemblage follows in Chapter Four. It reveals
that the blade and flake assemblage was remarkably inconsistent when
compared to classic Late Glacial blade technologies. This pattern was
confirmed by a substantial and laudable refitting programme, which succeeded
in conjoining no less than 2311 individual pieces to one of 521 refit
groups (21% of the entire assemblage). The refitting data are well presented
and the discussion is both authoritative and insightful. Envious lithics
experts will be anxious to discover what such a programme revealed.
They should not be surprised, however, to learn that the bywords are
variety and flexibility - from raw material choice and core sizes through
the chaîne opératoire, to support types and conversion
into tools. In particular, the authors note that blade production was
poorly defined and lacked standardization; that there was no evidence
of ‘mental templates’ for the key tool types at Rekem –
laterally modified points, scrapers and burins – and that they
are able to identify, with any degree of confidence, individual knapping
styles, although they do tentatively suggest some patterning, notably
in the manner of core discard.
Attribute data for
the major tool types is presented in Chapter Five. Typically the authors
use a barrage of technological indices to examine the Rekem collection,
all of which is admirably presented in tables, charts and excellent
technical drawings. For all this, though, the reader is left with some
disconcertingly familiar statements. For instance, there are thirty-one
pages devoted to the Rekem burins, the chief conclusions of which are
that burins were used primarily on the corners of the burin facets;
burins were mostly abandoned in the area where they had been made; and
burins display considerable typological variability and are probably
not good cultural indicators. Many readers may wonder whether these
are startlingly new observations. Undoubtedly the most promising results
from the analysis are when the authors make use of the excellent refitting
data discussed in Chapter Four. The detection of subtle patterns in
the ‘tool-biographies’, although not entirely new, does
demonstrate clearly the potential of the dynamic approach to lithics
analysis. This is perhaps the most important finding of the book.
The first half of
chapter six is devoted to the spatial analysis of each of the fifteen
loci at Rekem. Again the collection and presentation of data is impressive,
with over one hundred and fifty maps, some of which (those for raw material
distributions) are in colour. Using a variety of analytical methods,
including sector analysis, the authors define four use areas: production;
retooling, refuse deposits and isolated finds. Within these areas several
distinct activities are posited, based largely on usewear analysis,
but also integrating some of the technological and refitting data. Among
other things the analyses detect distinct ‘wet’ and ‘dry’
hide working areas, as well as hearths and dwelling structures, although
in both latter cases the evidence may be open to dispute. With such
an apparent wealth of spatial patterning readers might expect some interesting
discussion on the social implications. They will be disappointed. In
a somewhat tired discussion section the authors offer no more than that
settlement at Rekem may have been broadly contemporary, that gender
and ritual patterns are ‘beyond the scope‘ of the volume
(De Bie & Caspar 2000: 283), and that it makes little difference
whether one records lithics in grids (providing they are set at a sub-metre
level) or two dimensionally.
The monograph concludes
with a concise summary of the chief findings (repeated in both French
and Flemish). It should also be noted that the authors have presented
the raw attribute data for Rekem, together with their coding systems,
in three appendices at the end of Volume 2.
When viewing the Rekem
volumes as a whole, one is struck by the rigorous approach the authors
have taken to their subject. Quite literally, no stone has been left
unturned, and it is largely due to this patient and systematic research
and, of course, the high standard of the original excavations, that
has enabled De Bie and Caspar to write with such authority. Have they
taken our understanding of the Federmesser forward? Perhaps not, in
general terms; the major research questions associated with this complex
– origin, age, economy, culture, development - still loom large.
But their analyses have yielded results at other levels. Chief among
these must be their identification of an apparent decline in the standard
of stone working at Rekem compared to the earlier Magdalenian, and their
use of tool biographies to discern distinct activity zones within the
scatters. It will be interesting to see both of these observations tested
in the future. But perhaps the most important statement this book makes
concerns the potential of stone scatters found in sand. Despite almost
no organic remains and the well known difficulties surrounding post
depositional movement, the authors have shown that painstaking and rigorous
analysis does pay dividends.
Michael Reynier
University of Leicester
Review Submitted: June 2003
References Cited
Van Noten, F. 1978. Les Chasseurs de Meer. Disertationes Archaeologicae
Gandenses, 18.
Cahen, D. Keeley, L. and Van Noten, F. 1979. Stone tools, toolkits,
and human behaviour in prehistory. Current Anthropology, 20(4):
661-672.
Otte, M. 1994. L’industrie lithique de Meer IV. Anthropologie
et Préhistoire, 105: 39-62.
The views expressed in this review are not
necessarily those of the Society or the Reviews Editor.
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