Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sickles in the evolution of the prehistoric agricultural toolkit from Bulgaria

Use-wear studies have identified a long-lasting system of agricultural practices (harvesting) from the very beginning of the Early Neolithic in Bulgaria. For almost two millennia during the Neolithic and Chalcolithic (6th and 5th millennia BC), the archaeological evidence suggests the use of sickle elements based on blade segments and tools on blades inserted obliquely in a curved handle - the well-known Karanovo type of sickle.Post-Chalcolithic times are marked by a shift in the harvesting toolkit. This paper focuses on agricultural toolkits from three recently discovered and excavated sites in north Bulgaria: Oreshets near Belogradchik, Rasovo near Montana, and Chavdartsi in Lovech district. The sites are multilayered, the flint assemblages presented here belong to the LBA (Oreshets and Chavdartsi) and LBA/EIA (Rasovo). No structures or features directly associated with the flint artefacts were identi- fied, but the assemblages exhibit most (if not all) of the characteristics of the BA and post-BA agricultural repertoire. This repertoire includes varieties of denticulates (mainly blades) which from the beginning of the BA became diagnostic finds and marked a momentous shift from the preceding style of sickle. During the BA sickle inserts and blades were increasingly shaped through truncation and backing, both of which aided the accommodation of the implements in grooved handles and handheld tool manipulation. As an innovation, the emergence of which is difficult to fix chronologically within the BA, large, curved blades (ca 15 cm) appear in the agricultural toolkit during the LBA, with reminiscent use in the EIA as well.