Diachronic Maritime Archaeology (original) (raw)
Related papers
The vast majority of writings dealing with Viking maritime activity concentrate on movements in the western or southern direction, paying much less attention to the east -which can be seen as a reflection of recent political realities. The present Baltic States in particular have often been left out in discussions of Viking Age communications and sea routes. The Cold-War-era border running along the Baltic Sea created a situation where Baltic archaeologists faced several constraints induced by the Soviet system, primarily the lack of exact maps and restricted access to the sea. Society gradually accepted the subconscious concept that sea-faring is a complicated venture, with the sea hindering rather than favouring communication with neighbouring areas. Scandinavia, on the other side of the Baltic Sea, and even Finland, which is in places less than 100km from the northern coast of Estonia, seemed to be at an unreachable distance. This political situation of the recent past was erroneously projected back in history, creating an over-romantic vision of one-time brave seafarers and pirates.
Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 2006
The global warming at the end of the last glacial period led to a sea level rise, which induced substantial long-term landscape changes in the southwestern Baltic Sea. During the Preboreal and Boreal periods, this region, bordering on the Ancylus Lake in the east, was dry land with numerous lakes and rivers. However, with the beginning of the Littorina Transgression around 6700 BC, during the Atlantic period, the area became connected to the ocean. People settling along the coast of the former Ancylus Lake, Mesolithic hunter–gatherers, continuously had to adapt to rapid changes.The Littorina Transgression made a new source available to man: the young Baltic Sea. Important settlement sites were founded in the coastal regions, and were consumed one by one by the constantly rising sea level. At the time of the decline of the sea level rise and the beginning consolidation of the coast lines, a socially motivated turn towards a productive economy started. Hunting and fishery were widely replaced by agriculture and stock farming.To understand the interplay between all of these developments, it is necessary that scientists from a variety of disciplines undertake collective investigations. This paper presents first culture-historical, palaeozoological, palaeobotanical, palaeoecological and palaeogeographical results yielded by from the multidisciplinary research group SINCOS (Sinking Coasts) and uses these to create a new comprehensive picture of the development of the south-western Baltic Sea region during the Ancylus Lake and Littorina Sea stages.
Marine abundance and its prehistoric past in the Baltic
Nature Communications, 2022
In a recent article, Lewis et al.1 advance the hypothesis that an increase in the marine fertility of Danish waters from ca. 7600 cal BP onwards fuelled an intensification in the marine economy and a fourfold population increase in the later Mesolithic period. This hypothesis is severely compromised by: (a) reliance on archaeological data from shell middens without reference to the multiple biases that operate differentially to distort quantitative inferences from such deposits, (b) selective use of stable isotope data obtained from human bone collagen and dates concerning marine technology, and (c) the assumption that human economic choices closely or necessarily track environmental change.
Quaternary Science Reviews, 2018
During the Early and Mid-Holocene significant changes in the ecology and socio-cultural spheres occurred around the Baltic Sea. Because of the underlying climatic changes and thus environmental alterations, the area was the scene for various cultural developments during the period under investigation. In the course of the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age, isostatic and eustatic movements caused continual changes to the Baltic Sea basin. Changes in water level, however, affected not only the Early and Mid-Holocene coastlines, but also the whole Baltic Sea drainage system, including large lakes, rivers and watersheds in the hinterland were also dramatically impacted by these ecological changes. Prehistoric people were thus affected by changes in resource availability and reduction or enlargement of their territories, respectively. In order to evaluate the impact of changes in the water and land networks on the environment, resource availability, and human behaviour, and to reconstruct human responses to these changes, we pursue an interdisciplinary approach connecting environmental and archaeological research highlighted through different case studies.
Jennifer Schüle, Jirka Niklas Menke, Dawid Baumgarten, Eileen Kücükkaraca (eds.). INTERNATIONAL OPEN WORKSHOP Socio-Environmental Dynamics over the Last 12,000 Years: The Creation of Landscapes V Kiel, March 20-24, 2017. PROGRAMME and ABSTRACTS
Extended Deadline Dezember 14, 2016! The session deals with changes in areas around the Baltic Sea during the Early and Mid-Holocene. Because of the underlying climatic changes and thus environmental changes, the area was also the scene for various cultural developments during the period under investigation. Due to the melting of the glaciers at the end of the last Ice-Age, isostatic and eustatic movements caused continual changes to the Baltic Sea basin. But, changes in water level affected not only the Early and Mid-Holocene coast lines, the whole Baltic Sea drainage including large lakes, rivers and water sheds in the hinterland were also dramatically impacted by climate variability and consequent ecological changes. Thus, this had to affect prehistoric people as well by reducing or enlarging their territories. In order to evaluate the consequences of changes in the water networks on the environment, resources, and human behaviour, and to reconstruct human responses to these changes, this session pursues an interdisciplinary approach connecting environmental and archaeological research. We call for papers from various disciplines such as climatology, geology, palynology, zoology, and archaeology, to contribute to the understanding of the aforementioned processes. The discussion of the current chronological framework of coastline changes, water network displacements, lake level developments, and land upheaval/subsidence will enable us to synchronize palaeo-geographical and palaeo-cultural changes. This will serve as a basis for discussions of limitations and enhancements of cultural entities during the Early and Mid-Holocene.
Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology, 2006
The global warming at the end of the last glacial period led to a sea level rise, which induced substantial long-term landscapechanges in the southwestern Baltic Sea. During the Preboreal and Boreal periods, this region, bordering on the Ancylus Lake in theeast, was dry land with numerous lakes and rivers. However, with the beginning of the Littorina Transgression around 6700BC,during the Atlantic period, the area became connected to the ocean. People settling along the coast of the former Ancylus Lake,Mesolithic hunter–gatherers, continuously had to adapt to rapid changes.The Littorina Transgression made a new source available to man: the young Baltic Sea. Important settlement sites were foundedin the coastal regions, and were consumed one by one by the constantly rising sea level. At the time of the decline of the sea levelrise and the beginning consolidation of the coast lines, a socially motivated turn towards a productive economy started. Huntingand fishery were widely replaced by agriculture and stock farming.To understand the interplay between all of these developments, it is necessary that scientists from a variety of disciplinesundertake collective investigations. This paper presents first culture-historical, palaeozoological, palaeobotanical, palaeoecologicaland palaeogeographical results yielded by from the multidisciplinary research group SINCOS (Sinking Coasts) and uses these tocreate a new comprehensive picture of the development of the south-western Baltic Sea region during the Ancylus Lake andLittorina Sea stages.
I n t r o d u c t i o n The question of the earliest settlement of a territory is one of the most important and principal ones in Stone Age archaeology. It is a kind of benchmark in relations between nature and humans. Stone Age archaeological sites, especially Palaeolithic and Mesolithic ones, are vary rare. They are of great value because of the unique information they give us about the earliest stages of the development of human society. For various historical reasons, there is less information about social and eco-nomic processes in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in the Kaliningrad region of Russia than about neighbour-ing areas of northern Poland and southwest Lithuania. The present state of our knowledge on the Palaeolithic in the Kaliningrad region is based on previously single finds that are not linked with any complex. Basically, it is casual finds of the tips of arrows, harpoons, and other products made from bone and horn which have been found during land reclamation work...
Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 92 - 2011, 2014
The article presents the results of the SINCOS research group and the SINCOS II project bundle concerning the changes of the socio-economic system of the communities and societies living on the shore of the southwestern Baltic rim from the mid-Holocene Mesolithic and Neolithic period to the Early Medieval Age. The main focus is laid on the stage of the Littorina Transgression from 6000 to 2000 cal. BC, when the people living in the maritime zone between the Oder estuary and the Oldenburg Rift were facing a continuous shore displacement and a coastal decline, forcing them to move their settlements successively to pretect them from inundation. Because of the regionally differing intensity of the isostatic rebound to the isostatic uplift of northern Scandinavia, the coasts of the Bay of Mecklenburg were affected by this phenomenon to a much larger scale than those of the Arkona Basin and the Pomeranian Bay. Both areas were separated by the Darss Sill, which acted as a threshold between them. To be able to compare the environmental developments and human strategies employed in these regions, both of them were chosen as research Areas and investigated with the same methods. In both research areas all available Information about settlement remains originally positioned on the shore and indicating the relative sea level at their particular period of utilisation – and which thus can be used as sea level index points – were systematically recorded in the SINCOS database and formed the foundation for further research. A systematic survey based on geophysical measurements led to the discovery of numerous submerges sites in both research areas. Some of them offer exceptionalconditions for the preservation of organic material, so that artefacts as well as tools and multifaceted settlement refuse in large quantities could be recovered during surveys and excavations. Field work was restricted to sites from the Late Mesolithic until late Neolithic period between 6000 and 2000 cal. BC, because their remains should reflect the human reaction to the Littorina Transgression in a particular manner. Especially for Wismar Bay – forming one of the most important regional nuclei of research in the Bay of Mecklenburg – a large number of well preserved coastal sites was located, surveyed, and in some cases partly excavated. The material from these sites forms not only the basis for a detailed reconstruction of the chronological development from the Late Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic and the Settlement history for the period from 6000 until 4000 cal. BC, but also for the reconstruction of the intrusion of marine waters into Wismar Bay during the Littorina Transgression. Animal remains in combination with sediment conditions such as transgression contacts provide evidence of the appearance of the transgressing Baltic Sea at some distance from the present Island of Poel at about 6000 cal. BC. Some centuries later, both the fish species community and the frequency of the recorded species prove that the Littorina Transgression had reached this area. In the eastern research area – well investigated especially for the shores of the Bodden waters on Rügen Island – less dramatic changes of the environment meant that specialised sites with favourable general conditions related to their topographic setting were not abandoned as fast as in the western area. In fact, these sites stayed in occupation for centuries, so consequently a chrono-stratigraphic division of the archaeological material is only possible in a limited way. Definitely from the middle of the 5th millennium cal. BC, east as well as west of the Darss Sill the exploitation of the Baltic Sea – the hunting of seals and coastal fishery – became the economic basis of the human communities, and an important feature of the late Terminal Mesolithic Ertebølle Culture. Apparently this stayed true for a period of time, although around 4000 cal. BC the first livestock has been established in the entire southwestern Baltic Sea area. Investigations of aDNA samples have proved that the first cattle had Near Eastern ancestors, so that they must have been imported and did not result from the local domestication of autochthonous specimens. The same must be true for the contemporaneous first sheep and goats, whose ancestors are in any case of Near Eastern origin. During the last 4,000 years shoreline displacement and transgression east of the Darss Sill only affected the coastal settlements to a low degree, even though the sea level also rose here moderately during the Middle Ages as a consequence of the Late Subatlantic Transgression. This contrasts with the Bay of Mecklenburg, where the isostatic rebound together with the Late Subatlantic Transgression led during the Middle Ages to shoreline displacements and considerable erosions of settled and waterfront areas. Within the SINCOS research unit and the SINCOS II project bundle, methods and standards on interdisciplinary research on maritime and submerged prehistoric landscapes and sites could be developed and established for the southwestern Baltic area that may be transferred to other coastal areas affected by sea level changes and shoreline displacement.
Uniting Sea II. : Stone Age societies in the Baltic Sea region
2010
The second Uniting Sea workshop was held in Stockholm, Sweden in late October 2006. The event gathered participants from eight countries around the Baltic Sea, and 19 papers were presented covering a range of topics and geographic areas connected to the main theme of the workshop, i.e. Stone Age societies in the Baltic Sea region. This volume presents 12 of the papers presented at the workshop. The title "Uniting Sea" refers not only to the communicative importance of the sea during the Stone Age, but also to the need today of contacts and continued discussion across nation-borders to bridge the gap between research traditions in different countries. Hopefully the present publication can contribute to further discussions and contacts in this respect, across the Uniting Sea.