Quality Quartz

This paper discusses an assemblage of worked and smashed quartz associated with a Bronze Age kerbed cairn at Olcote. Most analytical treatments of quartz in Scottish prehistory have been structured around a pervasive dualism: quartz working is either the mundane use of a low quality raw material or the ritual use of a symbolically laden referent. The assemblage from Olcote highlights the dangers of such dichotomous analytical positions. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was initially presented at the "Luscious Lithics" session of TAG 2001, Dublin. We are very grateful to Nyree Finlay for organizing the session and to all those who were involved in the discussion. We would also like to thank a number of individuals and organizations: CFA Archaeology Ltd provided figures and Historic Scotland funded the excavation and report. Mark Edmonds made valuable comments on an early draft of the lithics report. Richard Bradley, Torben Ballin and Simon Gilmour have also provided important information. The paper has also benefited from the comments of two referees: Håkon Glørstad of the University of Oslo and Kjel Knutsson, Uppsala University. None of these people are responsible for our conclusions or any errors that we might have made in this paper

Archaeology · Art · Assemblage (archaeology) · Bronze · Bronze Age · Dualism · Norwegian · Prehistory · Quartz · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geology · History · Maritime and Coastal Archaeology · Paleontology · Philosophy · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology

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