Recent Studies in the Final Palaeolithic of the European Plain

About the book

The Final Palaeolithic cultures of the European Plain were characterized by a variety of adaptive responses, reflected in technologies, settlement patterns, subsistence practices, social organizations and, possibly, ideologies. Underlying this regional diversity of specific environmental and cultural changes were the fundamentals of climatic change in conditions that were relatively rapid and extreme and that very likely would have had major influence on contemporary hunter-gatherer land-use patterns.

By encouraging discussion of analogous or contrasting patterns in subsistence and settlement patterns and landscape use among geographically and geomorphologically different regions across most of Northwestern Europe (from Latvia to Belgium and from Switzerland to Central Sweden), this volume aims at a detailed inter- as well as intra-regional comparison and contrast of approaches and results.

The different chapters provide case studies and/or exhaustive reviews of currently available data from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland. Although contributions derive from several different research traditions they share important analytical and methodological approaches.

They discuss general problems such as the reconstruction of Lateglacial environments, the chronology of Final Palaeolithic colonization or questions of cultural differentiation, or they present reports concerning the most interesting and important recent discoveries from different parts of the Plain. The reader thus has an opportunity here to get acquainted with the most pertinent issues and problems in Lateglacial prehistory, and also with the current state of research.

Table of contents

Foreword

Bodil Bratlund & Berit Valentin Eriksen: Recent Studies in the Final Paleolithic of the European plain - an introduction

Else Kolstrup: Some classical methods used for reconstruction of Lateglacial environments in the European plain: potentials and limitations

Berit Valentin Eriksen: Reconsidering the geochronological framework of Lateglacial hunter-gatherer colonization of southern Scandinavia

Agneta Åkerlund: Life without close neighbours. Some reflections on the first peopling of east Central Sweden

Hans Kindgren: Tosskärr. Stenkyrka 94 revisited

Lars Larsson, Ronnie Liljegren, Ola Magnell & Jonas Ekström: Archaeo-faunal aspects of bog finds from Hässleberga, southern Scania, Sweden

Axel Degn Johansson: Late Palaeolithic settlement in South Zealand, eastern Denmark

Guntis Eberhards & Ilga Zagorska: The environment and the earliest settlement of Latvia, East Baltic

Jan Fiedorczuk & Romuald Schild: Wilczyce - a new late Magdalenian site in Poland; Bodil Bratlund: The faunal remains from Wilczyce

Jacek Kabacinski, Romuald Schild, Bodil Bratlund, Lucyna Kubiak-Martens, Kazimierz Tobolski, Klaas van der Borg & Anna Pazdur: The Lateglacial sequence at the Hamburgian site at Mirkowice: stratigraphy and geochronology

Michal Kobusiewicz: Ahrensburgian and Sviderian: two different modes of adaptation?

Clemens Pasda: A short note on man in the Allerød/Younger Dryas environment of Lower Lusatia (Brandenburg, Germany)

Stephan Veil & Klaus Breest: The archaeological context of the art objects from the Federmesser site of Weitsche, Ldkr. Lüchow-Dannenberg, Lower Saxonony (Germany) - a preliminary report

Marc De Bie, Utsav A. Schurmans & Jean-Paul Caspar: On knapping spots and living areas: intra-site differentiation at Late Palaeolithic Rekem

Philippe Crombé & Cyriel Verbruggen: The Lateglacial and early Postglacial occupation of northern Belgium: the evidence from Sandy Flanders

Eelco Rensink: Late Palaeolithic sites in the Maas valley of the southern Netherlands: prospects, surveys and results

Ebbe H. Nielsen: The Lateglacial settlement of the Central Swiss Plateau

List of contributors