The past along the track - page 2

From the times of wood and clay

The first direct hit was the discovery of the 5000 year-old remains of a settlement in the Hesbaye Region, near Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher. The houses were made of wood and daub in the Neolithic Period (New Stone Age), a period in which people gradually became more sedentary and made the switch to agriculture.

Map of the Neolithic site of Fexhe-le-Haut-Clocher (about 5000 years B.C.)

The team brought all kinds of materials up from the ground: the remains of pottery, flint, charcoal, pollen, … “It takes a great deal of specialists to analyse all the material,” Dominique tells us. “It is only by putting all the pieces of the puzzle together that we can reconstruct the story around this settlement”.

Seads of Carex, a waterplant growing on river banks

Piece of ash wood charcoal from the Neolithicum, seen through a microscope

The ‘traces of use’ analyst

For a long time flint was an important material for tools and utensils. A specialist worked out how the finds were made and what they were used for. This was done by means of a ‘traces of use’ analysis, in which traces of wear are examined under the microscope. “From this we can deduce what the object was used for: to cut meat, scrape hides… It also allows you do deduce a rough distribution of tasks: in one house most finds could be tools to cut meat, while in an other they were mainly used to scrape hides.”

Flint knife, used to scrape fatty hides (microscopic image)

The impressions of the post holes show that a house once stood here about 5000 years ago

The paleobotanist

A paleobotanist studies the – often carbonised – remains of plants, such as wood, grains and pollen. “We found that a ditch, which was filled by the inhabitants of the settlement, contained lots of remains of forest plants in the bottom layer, but gradually less and less towards the top. From this we can deduce that the settlement was built in forested area, and that the inhabitants gradually cut down the surrounding trees to make use of the wood and free the land for farming. The settlement therefore made an immediate and significant impact on the environment.”

Sediment samples are taken from a Neolithic pit for pollen analysis

The pottery specialist

The team investigated the type of clay used in the pottery finds and compared it with the clay found locally. “If the two types do not match you know that the pottery or clay has been brought in from elsewhere. The pottery in one of the settlement’s houses can even differ from that in another, meaning that the clay source changed with the passage of time. Were there several waves of colonisation? Or did they trade with settlements in the environment? These are interesting trains of thought, which can lead to a new understanding of the social and economic practices of the area’s inhabitants.”