Change and continuity: gender and flint knapping activities during the Neolithic in the Paris basin.

Résumé En

In the Paris basin, the Early Neolithic belongs to the Danubian cultures area with the Rubané culture, which is so-called LBK culture at the European level, followed the Blicquy/Villeneuve-Saint-Germain culture. The flint knapping of these cultures is characterised by several types of production and different levels of know-how: blade knapping, by indirect percussion; acquisition of rare or imported raw materials for certain blades; and flake knapping, mainly by hard percussion. Data on production and know-how, combined with the identification of houses or villages specialised in the production and the distribution of certain products, allow us to envisage that flint tools were produced by several social categories. These include the more or less specialised groups of individuals in particular houses or villages, for the production of regular blades, as well as individualsliving throughout the settlements, for the production of flakes and irregular blades. More generally, the study of funerary goods in the first Danubian cultures in particular western LBK, shows that regular blades produced from rare raw materials accompanied a small number of males, while women were accompanied by ordinary flakes or irregular tools made with local materials. This seems to indicate that, during this period, regular blade knapping was a male activity, while the production of the less regular blades on local flints and the production of the tool flakes could have been activities carried out by women and children. During the first part of the Middle Neolithic, the areas in the southern part of the Paris basin abandoned blade production by indirect percussion (Cerny culture), while this activity continued in the north-eastern portion of the Paris basin (Rössen culture). However, in the south, even if daily tools were made of flakes, some men were still being buried with regular blades, showing that this type of production remained confined to the male sphere, at least in death. This situation changed during the second part of the Middle Neolithic (Chassey culture of Burgundy) where, in funerary contexts, blades were associated with female graves.