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A Remarkable Case of Stylistic Imitation and Technological Persistence by Brian Hayden 1ii2007 The principle of stylistic imitation is well known in archaeological and modern economic circles. Western music and clothing styles are imitated in non-Western countries with phoney Rolex watches, Gucci shirts, and a wide array of prestige objects. One of the most notable examples of this phenomenon in prehistory involves the imitation of Bronze Age daggers in stone by Late Neolithic artisans in northern Europe. At the point of contact between the Scandinavian Neolithic peoples (who had no metals) and the incoming Bronze Age barbarians touting bronze daggers, halberds, and other finery, it is clear that Neolithic elites felt their manhood threatened by the longer and mightier bronze daggers of the newcomers (Hayden 2004). Envious of their new neighbors, and in an undoubted attempt to bolster their manhood image, it is well accepted by prehistorians that Neolithic elites pushed their artisans to create similar daggers even though there was no metal available in these societies. The result was a remarkable imitation of bronze daggers in flint (Apel 2001) – one of the crowning achievements of prehistoric flint knapping (Fig. 1). Creating these stone masterpieces required extraordinary skill and they were of indisputable value.  Fig. 1. A Scandinavian flint dagger of the late Neolithic (bottom) imitating the form of an early Bronze Age dagger in bronze (top). From Apel 2001:250. Similar examples of stylistic imitations, sometimes driven by symbolic envy have been proposed for the ceramic imitation of copper vessels by Lapita potters in Polynesia, and the use of uterine-shaped burial chambers of the immigrant Western European Neolithic populations in imitation of earlier indigenous ritual use of caves and burial cists by Mesolithic and Upper Paleolithic groups (Hayden 2004). Yet another example of this same stylistic imitation of prestige items has come to light recently in the Cascade Mountains of British Columbia. While encamped at Lindeman Lake, the author made the remarkable discovery of a stone artifact that was shaped to imitate a broken Coke bottle. The broken Coke bottle was discovered in the dried lakebed of Lindeman Lake in a remote area of the Cascade Mountains (Fig. 2). Even more extraordinarily, not two meters away from the broken Coke bottle, in the same dried lakebed, at the same stratigraphic level (ground surface), the author discovered a stone imitation of the Coke bottle (Fig. 2). The implications of this discovery are mind numbing.  Fig. 2. A broken Coke bottle discovered on the dry lakebed of Lindeman Lake in British Columbia (right), and the stone imitation of the Coke bottle discovered in the same sedimentary context only two meters away (left).
As anyone who has seen “The Gods Must Be Crazy” will immediately realize, the Coke bottle is generally revered by non-Western traditional societies, just as gin bottles were worshipped as totemic items by Australian Aborigines over a century ago (Warner 1958). The imitation of the Coke bottle in stone clearly attests to a profound reverence for the Coke bottle. Even more astounding, however, this discovery indicates the survival of an up-until-now unknown civilization in the Cascade Mountains that was still reliant on stone technology at the time that Coke bottles were being introduced into the region – much as stone was the only medium available to Neolithic elites for making daggers. Up until now, there has not been so much as a suspicion that such a stone-using civilization persisted so late in the backwaters of southern British Columbia. However, colleagues have since suggested that small populations of sasquatches in mountain refuges may have continued using stone technology into very recent times (see Krantz 1999 for documentation of sasquatch refuge populations). Could these refugium populations have been responsible for the stone imitation of a Coke bottle that I discovered? Furthermore, this discovery conclusively demonstrates that this civilization was characterized by a hierarchical social order with elites capable of commanding artisans to produce stone replicas of revered industrial objects. The implications are mind boggling. The author is currently preparing a substantial request for funding in order to document other such remarkable occurrences and to determine the nature of the populations that produced them. I will keep readers apprised of all future developments in this exciting field. References:
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