Alain Maitre

The exploitation of the quarries at Plancher-les-Mines (Haute-Saône) and, to a lesser extent, that of Réquista (Aveyron) present good examples of the regional production of technical tools, whose diffusion barely exceeds 200 to 250 km as the crow flies, during the 4th and 3rd millennia B.C. They make interesting points of comparison with the production of axes made of Alpine jades, which, on the contrary, can be found over the whole of Western Europe, at distances of up to 1 700 km, during the whole of the 5th and part of the 4th millennia. In the case of Plancher-les-Mines, we will study the diffusion of polished axes in terms of social functioning, testing the models proposed by Colin Renfrew, and in particular the decreasing number of artifacts, the further one gets from their point of origin, using one of the best data-bases in France (more than 30,000 artefacts in pelite-quartz : flakes, roughouts, polished axes, chisels, etc. currently inventoried). Such an interpretative mode...