manufactured products for export, such as ceramics or tanned hides. One
rock that did not have to be crafted into a product was salt. The Paleolithic
diet of wild animal meat had provided sufficient salt to satisfy human needs,
but the Neolithic diet featuring principally cereals often did not, necessitat-
ing the development of the salt trade.
As agriculture spread into places such as central and northern Europe, vast
forests had to be cleared, creating a demand for axes. The axe was a func-
tional tool, but it also became an important prestige item, a symbol of
maleness. Because it could be both utilitarian and ceremonial and was a
high-demand product, the trade in axes may have had more of a commercial
bent than either the giving of prestige gifts or the bartering of basic sub-
sistence goods. Exactly when professional traders guided by an entrepre-
neurial ethos and operating on strictly market principles entered the scene,
however, remains a matter of sometimes ferocious debate among archae-
ologists, anthropologists, and historians.
Some axe-producing operations were quite large. In thefifth and fourth
millenniaBCE, quarries in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France produced
axe-heads of aphanite, a black rock with close texture. Partially finished
objects were transported to nearby villages where they were made into
polished axes, then exported over an east–west exchange network that
extended as far as Switzerland. An even more widespread system involved
jadeite, afine-grained light green rock obtained from the western Alpine
regions of France and Italy and sent over three different routes reaching from
Scotland to southern Spain. The Irish made a large portion of their axes from
porcellanite, a hard, dense, siliceous rock that looks like unglazed porcelain.
Although only a few sources of it existed, all of which were located on the
northeast corner of the island, porcellanite axes spread throughout Ireland
and into Britain.
The most important stone used in Europe during the Neolithic Period was
flint, considered especially desirable for making daggers, spears, and sickles
as well as axes. Early exploitation offlint deposits was done seasonally by
pastoralists or on an episodic basis by small groups rather than by perma-
nently stationed workforces. Eventually someflint mines came to be quite
large as at one site in Poland where the minefield covered an area 2.5 miles
long and included 1,000 mineshafts, some reaching 36 feet deep.
Archaeologists have located trader hoards offlint daggers in remote northern
Sweden. Often in a given archaeological site both local and non-localflint
implements can be found together, the non-localflint having come from
different sources at varying distances away. Different varieties offlint were
more highly prized than others, with chocolate-colored being the most
favored even though from a purely functional standpoint it made no better
implements. Indeed exotic axes in general were sometimes made from stones
that were not as suitable as local varieties. Even more peculiar, people often
chose to exploit rock sources that were difficult or even dangerous to access,
16 In the beginning