2 Koban Heavy Bronze Sewing Needles North Caucasus c 1100 - 400 BC - Late hotsell Bronze Early Iron Age

Two exceptional heavy Koban bronze sewing needles from the steppes of the Black Sea over 2000 years old. The larger needle measures approximately 4 3/4 inches and the smaller over 3 1/4 inches. This is as received and original and unrestored. The first form of sewing was probably tying together animal skins using shards of bone as needles, with animal sinew or plant material as thread. The early limitation was the ability to produce a small enough hole in a needle matrix, such as a bone sliver, not to damage the material. Traces of this survive in the use of awls to make eyelet holes in fabric by separating rather than cutting the threads. A point that might be from a bone needle dates to 61,000 years ago and was discovered in Sibudu Cave, South Africa. A needle made from bird bone and attributed to archaic humans, the Denisovans, estimated to be around 50,000 years-old, and was found in Denisova Cave. A bone needle, dated to the Aurignacian age (47,000 to 41,000 years ago), was discovered in Potok Cave (Slovene: Potočka zijalka) in the Eastern Karavanke, Slovenia. Bone and ivory needles found in the Xiaogushan prehistoric site in Liaoning province date between 30,000 and 23,000 years old. Ivory needles were also found dated to 30,000 years ago at the Kostenki site in Russia. 8,600-year-old Neolithic needle bones were discovered at Ekşi Höyük, western Anatolia, in present-day Denizli Province.[14] Flinders Petrie found copper sewing needles at Naqada, Egypt, ranging from 4400 BC to 3000 BC. Iron sewing needles were found at the Oppidum of Manching, dating to the third century BC. Sewing needles are an application of wire-making technology, which started to appear in the second millennium B.C. Some fine examples of Bronze Age gold torques are made of very consistent gold wire, which is more malleable than bronze. However, copper and bronze needles do not need to be as long: the eye can be made by turning the wire back on itself and redrawing it through the die. The Koban culture (c. 1100 to 400 BC) is a late Bronze Age and Iron Age culture of the northern and central Caucasus. It is preceded by the Colchian culture of the western Caucasus and the Kharachoi culture further east. It is named after the village of Koban, Northern Ossetia, where in 1869 battle-axes, daggers, decorative items and other objects were discovered in a kurgan. Later, further sites were uncovered in the central Caucasus. The culture flourished on both sides of the Great Caucasus Range, and extended into the areas of Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia, and North Ossetia-Alania, and South Ossetia. It also reached the high north-western regions of Georgia such as Racha and Svaneti. Some areas of Northeast Caucasus also had Koban settlements, in particular the modern Ingushetia and the western regions of Chechnya. To the north, the culture extended as far as the Terek River, and to the Laba River in the Krasnodar area. The early phase of the Koban culture, especially in the west, possibly extends back as far as the 13th century BC, as the recent radiocarbon dates indicate. The Koban culture settlements (as opposed to isolated cemeteries) have been little studied, with the exception of those located in the modern Chechnya, such as near Serzhen-Yurt, and near Bamut; these were major centers from around 11th century BC to around the 7th century BC. The remains include dwellings, cobble bridges, altars, iron objects, bones, and clay and stone objects. There were sickles and stone grain grinders. Grains that were grown included wheat, rye and barley. Cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys, pigs and horses were kept. There were shops, where artisans worked on and sold pottery, stone-casting, bone-carving, and stone-carving. There is evidence for an advanced stage of metallurgy. There was differentiation of professionals organized within hotsell clans. The alloying of copper with antimony increases its hardness although, according to Charles (1980), with antimony contents above a few percent it becomes brittle,to the extent that it cracks on working. lt is therefore essentially a casting alloy. The Koban culture, named after the well-known site in Northern Ossetia, developed out of the existing Late Bronze Age culture of the Central Caucasus in the late 2nd millennium with the initial stage of cultural development dating to the 12th century BC. The culture is best known for its outstanding bronzes, primarily from cemetery sites. Graves were richly endowed with weapons such as daggers, axes and maces together with horse-bits, cheek-pieces and costume elements such as pendants, fibulae, bracelets, beads etc. Here is an opportunity to own a part of that history from the Koban. This can be relic, repurposed or even worn. As with all my artifacts these needles will carry a lifetime money back guarantee of authenticity, and I will provide a Certificate of Authenticity. Because of size and weight this will be sent Priority Mail.