OBSIDIAN - MAIN RAW MATERIAL FOR THE TOOLKIT COMPLEXES OF THE ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL CULTURES OF THE CAUCASUS

Abstract

Obsidian tools and its transportation as raw material for their manufacture have been traced at the primeval sites in Georgia in periods as early as the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic. These phenomena reached their peak in early agricultural Neolithic households. Naturally, this transportation was linked with the emergence of primeval trade relations. Instrumental studies were used to identify the chemical composition of obsidian from various sources and sites, presumable routes of raw material transfer from the sources to the sites, and prioritization of using obsidian from proximate and distant sources. The author applies use-wear in order to link the criterion of obsidian usage for the manufacture of tools with the technological and economic features of these implements, when the direction and amount of supplies were only regulated by the needs of particular households, for only the degree of economic effi ciency of a household determines the need for “export-import” relations, which represent the origins of emerging trade relations.