Roe deer as raw material for Middle Mesolithic fishhooks? An experimental approach to the manufacture of small bone fishhooks

Abstract

Bone fishhooks have occasionally been retrieved from bone assemblages at coastal sites dating to the Middle Mesolithic phase (8300-6300 cal. BC) in Southern Norway and Western Sweden (the north-eastern Skagerrak region, Figure 1). Several studies of fishhooks from these sites have been undertaken in recent years (Jonsson, 1996; Mansrud, 2017; Mansrud and Persson, 2017). Fishhooks can be manufactured from different osseous materials, including antler, ribs and shafts of different long bones of large ruminants (Bergsvik and David, 2015, p.208; Clausen, 2018; David, 1999, p.123). It has been assumed that species within the deer family (Cervidae) provided the raw material for the fishhooks in the north-eastern Skagerrak region. However, most of the bone assemblages are not well preserved. The animal bones and the fishhooks were heavily fragmented, often burnt and/or weathered (See Figures 2, 3). Thus, in many cases it was difficult to ascertain which osseous raw material was utilized, how the hooks were manufactured, and which skills were needed. Burnt fishhooks are neither suited for raw-material identification by ZooMS (Buckley, et al., 2009). Hence, in this paper, experimental replication was considered as a viable method to acquire novel information of fishhook manufacture and from which species and bone element they were made.