SESSION 13 - Obsidian - methodological issues of obsidian provenance studies and a new perspective of archaeological obsidian
Obsidian in the Danube bend: use of a long distance raw material in the Epigravettian period

Some of the few obsidian sources in continental Europe are found in the Carpathian Basin: in eastern Slovakia, in north-eastern Hungary and in Transcarpathian Ukraine. In an archaeological context, after the questionable data from the Lower Palaeolithic, the use of this raw material is clearly known from the last Interglacial period. In the millennia during and after the last Würmian Pleniglacial, a large part of Central Europe was more or less depopulated: from the areas north of the Carpathian chains and the Alps very few traces of the human occupation are known. In Hungary, however, a large number of hunting camps from this period have been excavated. The best-known cluster of sites is found in the Danube Bend, lying more than 200 km from the obsidian outcrops. The excavated assemblages from Pilismarót, Dömös, Szob and Veroce show various strategies of raw material use. The evidences of local reduction of the extra-local rocks together with the field observations and the analysis of the artefacts of other raw materials suggest short term occupations and increased mobility of Palaeolithic humans living in the period immediately following the coldest event of the last glacial period.