L’utilisation du harpon dans la culture Gumelniţa. Etude de cas : l’habitat de Borduşani-Popină (departement de Ialomiţa)
The use of the harpoon in Gumelnița culture, case study: the habitat of Bordușani-Popină (Ialomița county)

Summary/Abstract: For the Neo-Eneolithic of the Romanian territory, the harpoon represents the type of a11ifact belonging to the bone industry on which we have mast information. The lot we had at our disposal for this study, coming from the settlement from 13orduşani-Popină, is made up of22 harpoons (coming from the diggings of the period 1991-2008), of which two can be considered pieces that were in the course of processing. ln this study we have tried to identify the way how the raw matter was obtained, turned into finite pieces (processing techniques), then the economy of these finite pieces (the ways how they were used and their role in the economy), and finally the eventual repairs of the fractured pieces and their reintegration in the economy of the community. We have provided as well a series of experimental or ethnographic examples, in order to illustrate the fact that the general denomination of harpoon is incorrect, when extended to designate all the points with hooks. The ethnographic comparisons themselves, which at first seemed to offer the key to the way how these weapons were used (in the context in which they have not reached us integrally, as they have no handle, which we might be not yet able to identify among the archaeological remains), complicated the discussions, proving that a prey can be hunted in different ways and the same weapon can be used with different methods.

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