Anne-Marie Pétrequin

The Neolithic Quarries of Mont Viso, Piedmont, Italy: Initial Radiocarbon Dates

Abstract Two groups of quarries (Mont Viso and Mont Beigua, Italy) were the source of the Alpine axeheads that circulated throughout western Europe during the Neolithic. The quarries on Mont Viso (Oncino: Porco, Bule and Milanese), discovered in 2003, have been radiocarbon-dated, and this has revealed that the exploitation of jadeites, omphacitites and eclogites at high altitude (2000–2400 m above sea level) seems to have reached its apogee in the centuries around 5000 BC. The products, in the form of small axe- and adze-heads, were distributed beyond the Alps from the beginning of the fifth millennium, a few being found as far away as the Paris Basin, 550 km from their source as the crow flies. However, it was not until the mid-fifth millennium BC that long axeheads from Mont Viso appeared in the hoards and monumental tombs of the Morbihan, 800 km from the quarries. Production continued until the beginning of the third millennium BC, but at this time the distribution of the products was less extensive, a...

The Production and Circulation of Alpine Jade Axe-Heads during the European Neolithic: Ethnoarchaeological Bases of Their Interpretation

In 2003, the discovery of Neolithic working debris relating to the production of axe-heads of Alpine jade in the Mont Viso Massif, and the study of the European distribution of the products (between the Atlantic Ocean and the Black Sea) enabled us to propose a different picture of the Neolithic societies of the fifth and early fourth millennia B.C., in which socially significant “object-signs” could circulate over distances up to and exceeding 1800 km from the source (as the crow flies). The current interpretation of this phenomenon proposes that the value of these object-signs was based on the existence of specific ideal concepts relating to mythology and religious belief; these concepts constituted a key element in the exchanges that took place between elites in these profoundly inegalitarian societies.