Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T02:57:39.655Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Spondylus shell ornaments from late Neolithic Dimini, Greece: specialized manufacture or unequal accumulation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul Halstead*
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology & Prehistory, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, England

Abstract

Rings and buttons and beads cut from the marine shell, Spondylus gaederopus, are among the most distinctive exchange items of Neolithic Europe. From sources on the coast of the Mediterranean, these highly valued objects were widely distributed across central Europe. A re-examination of the nature and contexts of shell objects and manufacturing waste at Dimini, a key late Neolithic site on the coast of northern Greece, explores their social role within a Spondylus-working community.

Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BOGUCKI, P. 1988. Forest farmers and stockherders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
BRADLEY, R. 1984. The social foundations of prehistoric Britain. London: Longman.Google Scholar
BRADLEY, R. 1990. The passage of arms: an archaeological analysis of prehistoric hoards and votive deposits. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
COMSA, E. 1973. Parures néolithiques en coquillages marins découvertes en territoire roumain, Dacia 17: 6176.Google Scholar
FRIED, M.H. 1967. The evolution of political society. New York (NY): Random House.Google Scholar
GREGORY, C.A. 1982. Gift and commodities. New York (NY): Academic Press.Google Scholar
HALSTEAD, P. 1989. The economy has a normal surplus: economic stability and social change among early farming communities of Thessaly, Greece, in Halstead, P. & O’Shea, J. (ed.), Bad year economics: 6880. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HALSTEAD, P. 1992a. Dimini and the ‘DMP’: faunal remains and animal exploitation in late Neolithic Thessaly, Annual of the British School at Athens 87: 2959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HALSTEAD, P. 1992b. From reciprocity to redistribution: modelling the exchange of livestock in neolithic Greece, in Grant, A. (ed.), Animals and their products in trade and exchange, Anthropozoologica 16: 1930.Google Scholar
HOURMOUZIADIS, G. 1979. To neolithiko Dimini. Volos: Society for Thessalian Studies.Google Scholar
HOURMOUZIADIS, G. 1980. Isagogi sto neolithiko tropo paragogis,1, Anthropologika 1: 118–29.Google Scholar
HOURMOUZIADIS, G. 1981. Isagogi sto neolithiko tropo paragogis,2, Anthropologika 2: 3954.Google Scholar
MAUSS, M. 1970. The gift. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
MEILLASSOUX, C. 1981. Maidens, meal and money. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
O’SHEA, J. 1981. Coping with scarcity: exchange and social storage, in Sheridan, A. & Bailey, G. (ed.), Economic archaeology: 167–83. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International series 96.Google Scholar
SHACKLETON, J. 1988. Marine molluscan remains from Franchthi Cave. Bloomington (IN): Indiana University Press. Excavations at Franchthi Cave, Greece 4.Google Scholar
SHACKLETON, J. & ELDERFIELD, H. 1990. Strontium isotope dating of the source of Neolithic European Spondylus shell artefacts, Antiquity 64: 312–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SHACKLETON, N. & RENFREW, C. 1970. Neolithic trade routes realigned by oxygen isotope analyses, Nature 228: 1062–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
THEOCHARES, D.R. 1973. Neolithic Greece. Athens: National Bank of Greece.Google Scholar
TSOUNTAS, K. 1908. Ai proïstorikai akropolis Diminiou kai Sesklou. Athens: Athens Archaeological Society.Google Scholar
TSUNEKI, A. 1987. A reconsideration of Spondylus shell rings from Agia Sofia magoula, Greece, Bulletin of the Ancient Orient Museum 9: 115.Google Scholar
TSUNEKI, A. 1989. The manufacture of Spondylus shell objects at neolithic Dimini, Greece, Orient 25: 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WEISSHAAR, H-J. 1989. Pevkakia-Magula 1. Bonn: Rudolf Habelt.Google Scholar
WILLMS, C. 1985. Neolithischer Spondylussch-muck: hundert Jahre Forschung, Germania 63: 331–43.Google Scholar
ZANGGER, E. 1991. Prehistoric coastal environments in Greece: the vanished landscapes of Dimini Bay and Lake Lerna, Journal of Field Archaeology 18: 116.Google Scholar