Votive deposits and hoarding practices are of significance to archaeological research. They can provide insights to the economic and functional aspects but also to less mundane, ritual and symbolic behaviors of past societies. Prehistoric and historic examples are documented in various European regions (e.g., [1, 2]) but Neolithic hoards are generally not among the most frequently found and studied. Attempts to characterize these materials often focus on more traditional archaeology-related discourses, such as raw-material and typo-technological analysis, deposition practices and context-based interpretations. Alternative complementary analytical approaches remain less common in non-metallic hoards despite their informative potential. This scenario is quickly changing due to developments and application of functional studies and the broad field of archaeometry. Combining these approaches with contextual data offers a promising avenue for further research and interpretation.
Tomaso and colleagues [3] present an example of a Middle Neolithic radiocarbon-dated pit from the Beringen Brouweshuis site (Belgium) that was subject to archaeological excavations as part of a developer-funded programme [4]. A sample of flint polished axes, endscrapers and other smaller tool fragments recovered in the mentioned negative feature were selected for an initial residue and use-wear analysis. The materials were subject to a rapid burial and, although unclear if intentional and controlled or incidental, the majority of artifacts were damaged due to exposure to fire. On the one hand, macroscopic and microscopic traces of use-wear and hafting are scarce on the axes - of interest is the identification of an axe used as strike-a-light and the presence of iron-oxide that could relate to pedogenesis or ochre depositions. On the other hand, the scrapers are better-preserved, less impacted by heat, and show evidence of hide and plant processing, hafting and resharpening.
The case-study is discussed within the scope of a biographical approach [5] to the materials under analysis. Context, methods and interpretation limitations are clearly acknowledged by the authors. In sum, this paper presents interesting results on the first excavated Michelsberg culture axe hoard in Belgium. It contributes to the corpus of information on the relevance of fire (and possibly ochre) specifically in these deposits and more broadly to other past populations ritual and symbolic behaviors (e.g., [6, 7]). At the same time, it is an interesting addition to supra-regional discussions on how prehistoric daily objects can gain new meanings – a resignification – by being included on hoarding practices. The fact that other steps could have been part of this process, namely fire and eventually ochre, showcases the complexity and entanglements that these artifacts and deposits might have had during their lifecycle. 
 
References
[1] Naylor, J, Bland, R (2015) Hoarding and the Deposition of Metalwork from the Bronze Age to the 20th Century: A British Perspective. BAR British Series 615. Oxford: BAR Publishing.
[2] Bradley, R (2017) A Geography of Offerings. Deposits of Valuables in the Landscapes of Ancient Europe. Oxbow Insights in Archaeology. Oxford: Oxbow Books.
[3] Tomasso, J, Cnuts, D, Geerts, F, Vanmontfort, B, Roots, V (2025) From polishing to burning: deciphering a Middle Neolithic hoard from Beringen Brouwershuis (Belgium) through functional analysis. OSF preprints, ver. 2 peer-reviewed and recommended by PCI Archaeology https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/4yqch_v2
[4] Geerts, F, Claesen, J, Van Genechten, B, Bouckaert K (2021) De inhoud van een gereedschapskist? Een midden-neolithische depotvondst te Koersel, (Beringen, prov. Limburg, BE). Notae Praehistoricae 41: 147-158. 
[5] van Gijn, A (2010) Flint in focus: Lithic biographies in the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Leiden: Sidestone Press.
[6] Larsson, L (2000) The passage of axes: fire transformation of flint objects in the Neolithic of southern Sweden. Antiquity 74(285): 602-610. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00059962
[7] Larsson, L (2011) Water and fire as transformation elements in ritual deposits of the Scandinavian Neolithic. Documenta Praehistorica 38: 69-82. https://doi.org/10.4312/dp.38.6

The paper entitled “Investigating relationships between technological variability and ecology in the Middle Gravettian (ca. 32-28 ky cal. BP) in France” [1] submitted by A. Vignoles and colleagues offers a robust and interesting new analysis of the niche differences between the Rayssian and Noaillian facies of the Middle Gravettian in France.

Understanding technological variability in the Palaeolithic is a long-standing challenge. Previous debates have vacillated between strong, quasi-ethnic culture-historical interpretations rooted in the traditional European school and extreme functional stances that would see artefact forms and their frequencies with assemblages conditioned by site function. While both positions have their merits, many empirical and conceptual caveats haunt them equally [see 2]. In this new study Vignoles and colleagues, so-called eco-cultural niche modelling is applied in an attempt to explore whether, and if so, which environmental background factors may have conditioned the emergence and persistence of two sub-cultural categories (facies) within the Middle Gravettian: the Rayssian and the Noaillian. These are are defined through, respectively, a specific knapping method and the presence of a specific burin type, and the occurrence of these seems divided by the Garonne River. Eco-cultural niche modelling has emerged as an archaeological application of distribution models widely employed in ecology, including palaeoecology, to understand organismal niche envelopes [3]. They constitute powerful tools for using the spatial and chronological information inherent in the archaeological record to up-scale interpretations of human-environment relations beyond individual site stratigraphies or dating series. Another important feature of such models is that their performance can, as Vignoles et al. also show, be formally evaluated and replicated. Following on from earlier applications of such techniques [e.g. 4], the authors here present an interesting study that uses very specific archaeological indicators – namely the Raysse method and the Noaillian burin – as defining features for the units (communities, traditions) whose adaptations they investigate. While broad tool types have previously been used as cultural taxonomic indicators in niche modelling studies [5], the present study is ambitious in its attempt to understand variability at a relatively small spatial scale. This mirrors equally interesting attempts of doing so in later prehistoric contexts [6].

Applications of niche modelling that use analytical units defined through archaeological characteristics (technology, typology) are opening up exciting new opportunities for pinning down precisely which environmental or climatic features these cultural components reference, if any. The study by Vignoles et al. makes a good case. At the same time, this approach also acutely raises questions of cultural taxonomy, of how we define our units of analysis and what they might mean [7]. It remains unclear to whether we can define such units on the basis of very different technological traits if the aim is to then use them as taxonomically equivalent in subsequent analyses. There is also a risk that these facies become reified as traditions of sub-cultures – then often further equated with specific people – through an overly normative view of their constituent technological elements. In addition, studies of adaptation in principle need to be conscious of the so-called ‘Galton’s Problem’, where the historical relatedness of the analytical units in question need to be taken into account in seeking salient correlations between cultural and environmental features [8]. In pushing forward eco-cultural niche modelling, the study by Vignoles et al. thus takes us some way forward in understanding the potentially adaptive variability within the Gravettian; future work should consider more strongly the specific historical relatedness amongst the cultural taxa under study and follow more theory-driven definition thereof. Such definition would also allow the post-analysis interpretations of eco-cultural niche modelling to be more explicit. Without doubt, the Gravettian as a whole – including, for instance, phenomena such as the Maisierian [9] – would benefit from additional and extended applications of this method. Similarly, other periods of the Palaeolithic also characterized by such variability (e.g. the Magdalenian and Final Palaeolithic) offer additional cases moving forward.

Bibliography

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[3] Svenning, J.-C., Fløjgaard, C., Marske, K.A., Nógues-Bravo, D., Normand, S., 2011. Applications of species distribution modeling to paleobiology. Quaternary Science Reviews 30, 2930–2947. 10.1016/j.quascirev.2011.06.012

[4] Banks, W.E., d’Errico, F., Dibble, H.L., Krishtalka, L., West, D., Olszewski, D.I., Townsend Petersen, A., Anderson, D.G., Gillam, J.C., Montet-White, A., Crucifix, M., Marean, C.W., Sánchez-Goñi, M.F., Wolfarth, B., Vanhaeren, M., 2006. Eco-Cultural Niche Modeling: New Tools for Reconstructing the Geography and Ecology of Past Human Populations. PaleoAnthropology 2006, 68–83.

[5] Banks, W.E., Zilhão, J., d’Errico, F., Kageyama, M., Sima, A., Ronchitelli, A., 2009. Investigating links between ecology and bifacial tool types in Western Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum. Journal of Archaeological Science 36, 2853–2867. 10.1016/j.jas.2009.09.014

[6] Whitford, B.R., 2019. Characterizing the cultural evolutionary process from eco-cultural niche models: niche construction during the Neolithic of the Struma River Valley (c. 6200–4900 BC). Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11, 2181–2200. 10.1007/s12520-018-0667-x

[7] Reynolds, N., Riede, F., 2019. House of cards: cultural taxonomy and the study of the European Upper Palaeolithic. Antiquity 93, 1350–1358. 10.15184/aqy.2019.49

[8] Mace, R., Pagel, M.D., 1994. The Comparative Method in Anthropology. Current Anthropology 35, 549–564. 10.1086/204317

[9] Pesesse, D., 2017. Is it still appropriate to talk about the Gravettian? Data from lithic industries in Western Europe. Quartär 64, 107–128. 10.7485/QU64_5