Rydno. A Stone Age Red Ochre Quarry and Socioeconomic Center. A Century of Research

Since the advent of anthropological investigation, it has been evident that red ochre had many important uses during prehistoric times. Red Ochre was certainly the most important commodity in the Stone Age. In the recent world of small societies, as in prehistory, sources of red ochre are less prevalent than those of siliceous materials are. Therefore, their value and social significance outweighed that of flint. This can be seen in the enormous Rydno agglomeration of settlements that have no parallel in the Stone Age camps that rarely accompany flint quarries Overall campsite density in the Rydno Complex is on a scale unmatched by any other areas of prehistoric settlement in the world. By way of barter, but also by traveling to the quarry area, the Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic world of Central and Northern Europe procured and distributed the red ochre hematite gravel and clay. The Rydno Center emerged as a place where human groups either extracted the hematite and clay by themselves or procured it from other groups controlling the source. Many of the groups camped in the area longer than the necessary time for the acquisition of the desired product, often combining red ochre procurement with intensive processing of flint brought in from the neighboring chocolate flint quarries. Organized and probably long-lived villages at Rydno are one of the factors implying that at certain times social groups composed of several households controlled the quarry and received compensation for a permit to access the mine. At other times, right of entry to the complex may have been relatively easy. Intense occupation of the Rydno area, the presence of a large array of raw materials, including exotic ones, in the remains of the camps, as well as the discrete sociotopographic locations of different social and/or ethnic groups, give rise to the proposition that Rydno was also an important meeting ground for hunter-gatherer bands, temporarily aggregating for joint social ceremonies and trade. Even to a non-specialist in prehistoric archaeology, a very close analogy between Australia's Parachilna, as well as other similar recent ochre sites of Australia or the Americas, and Rydno is evident. These similarities are governed by the universal socioeconomic rules of hunter-gatherer and forager societies resulting from their place in the ecological and social environment. The Rydno of our forefathers, with its changing histories of ownership and systems of access to the quarry, meeting grounds, places of group aggregation and distant expeditions is an ancient telescopic synthesis of nearly all recent red ochre sites and their socioeconomic environments.