Tool Dichotomies in a Period of Inter-epochal Transition – Philosophical and Anthropological Reflections on Post-Neolithic Dual Technology

Abstract

The presented publication is the end result of an authorial, post-doctoral research project devoted to the multi-aspect flint tool dichotomy at the turn of the Stone and Metal Ages. The results of use-wear analysis of archaeological materials from south-eastern Poland and the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, obtained by the author over the last decade, have been supplemented in this article with a philosophical component. By visualising the network of connections on the empirical-theory line, the explanatory value of the dichotomous lithic concept was raised. Moreover, the discourse on the period at the turn of the Stone and Metal Ages has been enriched with new interpretative solutions for economic and social issues of that time in prehistory. The author places his philosophical investigations within the hermeneutical approach. After the study of key terms (dichotomy, divergence, convergence), structuralist thought becomes the leading theme at the end of the article. The paper deals with the concepts of such thinkers as: Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.