Reflections on hide-working: Interpreting inter-site variability on Vlaardingen group sites through use-wear analysis on scrapers from Den Haag Steynhof

As part of the Putting Life into Late Neolithic Houses¹ project this study focuses on hide-working traces, as an argument in the discussion about the occupation duration in Vlaardingen group sites (3400–2500 BCE), located in the Rhine/Meuse basin. Our working hypothesis suggested that traces of initial stages of hide-working would be dominant in temporary extraction camps, while traces of later and more time-consuming hide-working activities would represent permanent settlements. For that matter experiments with fresh hide scraping and dehairing were conducted accordingly with results demonstrating that, under certain conditions, traces of dry hide scraping can be differentiated from those of dehairing. The archaeological material studied comes from the permanent coastal dune site of Den Haag Steynhof, and includes 37 flint scrapers from zone 5. Notably, matching traces were found between scrapers experimentally used for dehairing and three of the scrapers from the archaeological assemblage, making Steynhof the first Vlaardingen group site to have yielded such traces. Furthermore, our results showed that in Steynhof later stages of hide-working, as well as resharpening, were represented better than the initial stages of hide-working. Our hypothesis is further confirmed by the fact that this pattern can also be observed in other permanent settlements of the Vlaardingen group, while in the temporary extraction camp of Hekelingen III traces of the initial stages are dominant. Consequently, variation in hide-working traces could be used to infer information about the occupation duration of Vlaardingen group sites as well as other Neolithic sites in the region characterised by the ‘broad spectrum economy’.