Iron Gates (Serbia). The difference in the use of stone raw materials during Mesolithic-Neolithic transition

The archaeological sites in the Iron Gates present an excellent key study for mapping the influx of non-local raw materials, with reference to the chipped stone artifacts from the sites Lepenski Vir and Padina. The petroarchaeological analysis has not been systematically applied in the previous research projects, and this paper will deal with the already published data. Human activities in the Mesolithic-Neolithic transitional period in the Iron Gates are in the focus of this research. This kind of research conducts a new use-wear analysis of the chipped stone artifacts from the sites Lepenski Vir and Padina and combines them with the already existing hypotheses. The previous interpretations proposed that different varieties of grey flint represented local raw materials and that the presence of the so-called Balkan flint was a sign of the import of a non-local material. This kind of selection has been carried out on the basis of the research done so far by various authors, who produced a large number of models of non-local raw material import. But was there a distinction between the use of these raw materials in the past? What was the Balkan flint used for, and what kinds of activities were the locally extracted flint and quartzite used for? How was the non-local raw material introduced into everyday practice? The answers to these questions can provide a deeper insight into the lithic technological organization of the archaeological sites in the Iron Gates, and also help solve the issues connected with the procurement of raw material by producing new data, never observed before.