The Provenance of Basaltoid Polished Stone Tools of the Corded Ware Culture in Moravia (Czech Republic)

Basaltoid rocks are widespread in central Europe and in the Corded Ware Culture (CWC) in Moravia they were a sought-after raw material for the production of polished stone tools, along with serpentinites, amphibolites and metabasites. An important precondition for the study of the provenance of CWC basaltoid artefacts was the use of non-destructive methods. Therefore, portable XRF (pXRF) and magnetic susceptibility (MS) measurements were used. Both methods have been applied to a total of 16 CWC polished stone artefacts from central Moravia. Furthermore, the most probable source rocks in northern Moravia and in the adjacent part of Silesia were measured in this way. The data obtained by pXRF, together with several hundred data items obtained from published papers, were evaluated by Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The results of this study confirmed our presumptions that the CWC people were connected predominantly with northern and western territories, i.e. northern Moravia and adjacent part of Silesia, Lower Silesia or Bohemia, rather than with Carpathian-Pannonian region.