Publisher's Synopsis
The numerous discoveries of black stone artefacts in Europe open new fields of research of great interest as regards the understanding of raw material acquisition and manufacturing and also the reconstruction of ancient exchange networks. Two main research axes were explored for this multidisciplinary research: the material was studied using archaeological, geological and analytical approaches. A new analytical protocol using LA-ICP-MS was tested and gives promising results and opens future developments.The aim of this study was to reconstruct the relationships between artefacts and sources during the Iron Age in Celtic Europe, and also to understand the distribution of the raw material and production systems of these black stone artefacts. Some changes between the Iron Age periods necessitated the examination of the circulation and diffusion of black stone objects across Europe, and also the long-distance trade of materials. These results constitute the most comprehensive archaeological, geological, and analytical referential database for European black stone material available to date.
