Liviu, Marta - Szőcs Péter Levente (szerk.): Catalogul colecţtiei de archeologie (Satu Mare, 2007)
Paleoliticul şi mezoliticul
activities of the groups. They obtained food by hunting wild animals and by gathering plants and small animals (this explains the name of hunters-gatherers given to this populations). Therefore, it is not at random the fact that the hills like the ones from Boineşti and Remetea Oaşului were intensely inhabited during the three stages of the Paleolithic Age present in Oaş, due to the special geographical position that offers a very good view on the Oaş Depression and on the main valleys, as well as probably on the routes of migration of the animal herds. As the name of the age implies, the Paleolithic is characterized by using stone tools, more exactly, chopped stone tools (giving the name of Chipped Stone Age). Not all stones are fit for chipping, therefore, the Paleolithic people had to identify and exploit the rock resources with physical properties suitable for knapping. The most important was to control the detachment of the flakes (or blades) from the block of stone (core), through different techniques of percussion. The most used rocks within the Paleolithic communities of the Oaş Depression were of local origin, but there were import goods from longer or shorter distance, too. The quality of the latter stones is superior: the obsidian from the Tokaj-Presov Mountains from Hungary and Slovakia; and the flint from the Upper Basins of Prut and Nistru Rivers. The local rocks vary in quality, but at the same time they reveal a great variety: limnic silicates (or limnic quartzite), jaspers, siliceous sandstones, andesites etc. The sources of the raw materials were the river gravels and the surface quarries, like the quarry of limnic silicates from Racşa. Once the right rocks were found, the peoples proceeded to transform them into tools. The remains of the complex activities of chipping the stones made in the same location and the left piles of unused cores, flakes and chopping residues are found in archaeological excavation and they indicate the existence of veritable chipping workshops (cat. no. 18). Through knapping the core (cat. no. 15-17), flakes and blades are resulted (cat. no. 1), used as blanks for the tools, but they could have been used as it were too. The tools (from typological point of view) were obtained after modifying the blades and the flakes by retouching their edges. Consequently there were obtained a set of tools, the most important being: the scrapers (side-scrapers and endscrapers) (cat. no. 2-8, 10, 12), the chisels (burins) (Nr. cat. 9, 11), borers (cat. no. 14) and the points (cat. no. 13). The main activities where these tools were used are: hunting (the points), cutting meat (the. flakes, the blades, the scrapers), processing skins and making clothes (the scrapers and the borers), processing bones and horns (the chisels and the borers), as well as many other different actions of cutting, scraping, boring, cleaning etc. Certainly, the tools of the Paleolithic man were not made exclusively of chipped stone, but only this type resisted through time. In many Paleolithic sites around the world tools of bones and horns are found. The Oaş Depression is an exception, here the acidity of the soils corroded totally the bones. In addition, it can be assumed that the Paleolithic man used wooden tools, and various vegetal fibres (e.g. for fixing stone tools in the wooden handles). The lifestyle of the Paleolithic man was strongly influenced by nature. The climate, the vegetation and the fauna used to be different than nowadays, cold periods (glaciations) alternated with warm periods (interglaciations), therefore the landscape varied from tundra and steppe to coniferous and deciduous forests. 11.500 years ago, the last glaciation started its complete and very fast withdrawal from the European continent, the climate became warm quickly and forests with small animals took place to the mammoths’ steppe. Human communities adapted to the new landscape, inventing new techniques of subsistence and taking the first steps toward productive economy. This period of major transformation under the impact of climate changes is known in archaeology as the Mesolithic period and in the Carpathian Basin it lasted until the arrival of the first Neolithic farmers about cca. 8.000 years ago. In Satu Mare County there is only one 29
