make us think, well, perhaps. And a good deal offlux is apparent in the
obsidian trade. Over a period of time, a particular site can go from having 90
percent of its stone tools in obsidian to practically nothing and later back up
to 90 percent. No doubt the trade was widespread, and today obsidian tools
are found scattered across Southwest Asia and parts of Europe hundreds of
miles from their source. Obsidian could travel in the form of raw nodules,
preforms and cores, orfinished blades. No wheeled vehicles or even pack
animals were used; obsidian was carried by humans on foot or by boat.
Initially this trade appears to have been down-the-line, but in some places,
particularly where boat travel was involved, it became directional. Early
Neolithic people inherited Paleolithic networks of contacts through which
obsidian initially moved, and eventually the obsidian trade itself developed a
whole new series of networks for subsequent generations of products toflow
through.
Large-scale obsidian tradefirst appeared in Southwest Asia. The major
sources were located at spots stretching from west to east across central
Anatolia, ancient Armenia, and northern Iran. Most of the distribution
shows a fall-off pattern with villages near a source using a very high per-
centage of obsidian tools and its presence declining with distance.
Nevertheless, some Anatolian obsidian can be found up to 600 miles away,
and Armenian obsidian reached as far as Bahrain in the Persian Gulf
although nearby Qatar imported its obsidian from the opposite direction on
the southwestern tip of the Arabian peninsula. Egypt also used the Arabian
source and another in nearby Ethiopia, where a natural outcrop is reported to
have been located near the mouth of a bay buried under a mountain of sand
in the Red Sea. Obsidian from southeastern Slovakia and northeastern
Hungary was traded to people living in southern Poland across a 5-day
journey 120 miles over the Carpathian Mountains. In the meantime, the
same people in southern Poland were exporting theirflint to Silesia 120
miles to the west.
In Italy and the Aegean region, obsidian had to travel by sea. Italy was
served by several islands, including Lipari off the north coast of Sicily,
Palmorala between Rome and Naples, and southern Sardinia. In the early
Neolithic one site in northern Italy began importing cores from Sardinia 270
miles away and Palmorala 300 miles away. In the middle Neolithic it added
a small portion of imports from Lipari 500 miles away. By the late
Neolithic, the Lipari product constituted almost 90 percent of this market,
apparently because it was clearer and more glass-like. In this case, Lipari
obsidian seems to have become a prestige item, and quality was considered
more important than distance.
The Aegean Sea region had one major source, which was on the island of
Melos directly north of Crete and east of the southern tip of Greece. Melian
obsidian ultimately reached all around the area, including far inland.
However, unlike Italy, there is no indication of directional trade, nor is there
20 In the beginning