Obvious non-obviousness. Bifacial sickles of striped flint

Abstract

The article presents results of refittings of two half-products of bifacial sickles made from banded flint. Theseitems are typical for the Mierzanowice culture but usually had been made from different kind of raw material. Banded flint was extracted in the Borownia mine and used mainly for the production of bifacial axes. Nine kilometers away from site is Ożarów where production was focused on sickles made from Turonian flint. Banded flint is very difficult to work with and is unlikely to be suitable for the production of thin bifaces. To deal with that and make more elaborate product such as sickles, the flintknappers in Borownia used only a certain part of raw material just underneath the cortex layer. Although the presented sickles seem to by something extraordinary when it comes to selection of raw material they don’t contradict the relation between the physical properties of flints and the types of tools known from Mierzanowice culture.