Two flint artifacts were found during field surveys in the Moselle region, both striking for their petrographic as well as their typological attributes. One of them was found on a sandstone plateau in Luxembourg, the other one on the lower terrace of the Moselle river near the city of Trier. Considering their specific morphology, the two retouched artifacts-one slightly smaller than the other one-can be qualified as typical crescent-shaped Altheim sickles. The piece from Lintgen (Luxembourg) is a big fragment of tabular flint, rhombic in outline after old and newer breaks, with a short continuous bifacial retouch on one edge. The two cortical sides show major traces of polishing to smoothen the the cortex. The material is a grey-brown flint with light beige mudstone structure zones. According to macro- and microscopic observations of the very regular cortex, the texture, the structure as well as the colour of the flint, the artifact shows all the characteristics of a banded tabular flint from the south-east of Germany near Kelheim, south of Regensburg. It is an Arnhofen type tabular flint. The specimen from Trier-Zewen is a small, crescent-shaped cortex tabular flint with a straight cutting edge and a curved back. One side has a quite wide zone of natural, low grained white-yellow cortex, which becomes dark brown in its depth, which is followed by a thin opaque zone of reddish dots. The opposite surface is formed by a natural cleavage. All edges of the entire artifact are retouched and wear a weak and slightly spread polish due to usage. The cutting edge is intentionally dentate. Because of the mudstone-wackestone structure, the artifact is made of tabular chert of the Baiersdorf Typ. These chert variations geologically belong to the Tithonian, a stage of the Upper Jurassic Malm formation. Typologically speaking the morphology of the artefacts presented here corresponds to the morphology of sickles and daggers, like those produced in the region of Regensburg along the Danube during the Upper and Final Neolithic. This kind of tools made out of thin tabular slabs were produced in particular since the end of the Münchsh?fen culture in Bavaria and afterwards in particular by the Altheim group between 3800 and 3400 BC. The geographical distribution reached eastwards down the Danube into present-day Austria, as well as to the West, South and North over several hundreds of kilometers. Comparisons show that this kind of far reaching transportation in the context of reuse or in slightly smaller editions occur until the end of the third millennium BC during the Bell Beaker culture and even beyond into the early Bronze Age. The important dissemination of these Bavarian products demonstrates the existence of a well networked distribution System. The identification of these two artifacts in the Moselle region in Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as in Luxembourg, fills the gap still perceived in the distribution pattern of Bavarian tabular chert artifacts. The mining areas of the tabular chert are located approximately 400 kilometers from Luxembourg and Trier. Therefore this distance is comparable to the diameter of the slightly more recent dissemination area of the Grand-Pressigny type flint in opposite direction. If one is to compare these two distribution maps, one may notice that they are mirrored but still complement each other between Middle and Western Europe. Furthermore these productions can be related to the peak of the mining phenomenon in regions with high quality flint deposits.
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