The objects found with the Iceman don’t just tell us about the individual who owned them. They also suggest something about the larger community to which he belonged. As we have seen, creating the Iceman’s objects required a wide variety of skills, including metallurgy, stone carving, wood carving, leather tanning, and weaving. We also know that his community did not subsist solely on hunting and gathering. As you learned in the “Individuals in Society” feature, the bluish tinge of his teeth proves that milled grain formed a substantial part of his diet, suggesting that the Iceman and his people were farmers as well as hunters. Thus, taken together, the evidence places the Iceman in a complex society, one with a certain degree of economic specialization and one that employed a technology-intensive, multipronged approach to providing for the needs of its members. As you examine this artist’s rendering of a Neolithic village located in what is now modern-day England, try to imagine the community to which the Iceman belonged. In what ways might it have been similar to the village at Durrington Walls?

Questions to Consider