We report the discovery of a 50,000-y-old birch tar-hafted flint tool found off the present-day coastline of The Netherlands. The production of adhesives and multicomponent tools is considered ...complex technology and has a prominent place in discussions about the evolution of human behavior. This find provides evidence on the technological capabilities of Neandertals and illuminates the currently debated conditions under which these technologies could be maintained. 14C-accelerator mass spectrometry dating and the geological provenance of the artifact firmly associates it with a host of Middle Paleolithic stone tools and a Neandertal fossil. The find was analyzed using pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, X-ray micro-computed tomography, and optical light microscopy. The object is a piece of birch tar, encompassing one-third of a flint flake. This find is from northwestern Europe and complements a small set of well-dated and chemically identified adhesives from Middle Paleolithic/Middle Stone Age contexts. Together with data from experiments and other Middle Paleolithic adhesives, it demonstrates that Neandertals mastered complex adhesive production strategies and composite tool use at the northern edge of their range. Thus, a large population size is not a necessary condition for complex behavior and technology. The mitigation of ecological risk, as demonstrated by the challenging conditions during Marine Isotope Stage 4 and 3, provides a better explanation for the transmission and maintenance of technological complexity.
In order to understand our past, we need to understand ourselves as archaeologists and our discipline. This volume presents recent research into collecting practices of European Antiquities by ...national museums, institutes and individuals during the 19th and early 20th-century, and the 'Ancient Europe' collections that resulted and remain in many museums. This was the period during which the archaeological discipline developed as a scientific field, and the study of the archaeological paradigmatic and practical discourse of the past two centuries is therefore of importance, as are the sequence of key discoveries that shaped our field. Many national museums arose in the early 19th century and strived to acquire archaeological objects from a wide range of countries, dating from Prehistory to the Medieval period. This was done by buying, sometimes complete collections, exchanging or copying. The networks along which these objects travelled were made up out of the ranks of diplomats, aristocracy, politicians, clergymen, military officials and scholars. There were also intensive contacts between museums and universities and there were very active private dealers.The reasons for collecting antiquities were manifold. Many, however, started out from the idea of composing impressive collections brought together for patriotic or nationalistic purposes and for general comparative use. Later on, motives changed, and in the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities became more scientifically oriented. Eventually these collections fossilized, ending up in the depots. The times had changed and the acquisition of archaeological objects from other European countries largely came to an end.This group of papers researches these collections of 'Ancient Europe' from a variety of angles. As such it forms an ideal base for further researching archaeological museum collection
history and the development of the archaeological discipline.
This paper briefly presents and critically discusses decorated objects (stone, bone and antler), personal ornaments and other perforated objects from the Upper and Late Palaeolithic in the ...Netherlands. The finds can be attributed to the Hamburgian, the Federmessergruppen and the Ahrensburgian. To date no engravings and ornaments are known with certainty from the Late Magdalenian or the Creswellian. Finds from the Federmessergruppen confirm the transition from a more naturalistic way of representation to more stylized, geometric Mesolithic art. Besides directly dated objects and objects from secure contexts a number of controversial pieces is discussed as well.
Doggerland Amkreutz, Luc; Van der Vaart-Verschoof, Sasja
2022
eBook
This popular-science book tells the story of one of the most important, but least known major archaeological sites in Europe: Doggerland. Few people know that the beaches along the North Sea lie on ...the edge of a vast lost world. A prehistoric landscape that documents almost a million years of human habitation and lay dry for most of that time. Doggerland is where early hominids left the first footprints in northern Europe, more than 900,000 years ago. Later, for hundreds of thousands of years, it was the scene of ice ages. A world of woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses, horses and reindeer and the successful Neanderthals who hunted them, including Krijn: the first Neanderthal from Doggerland. At the end of the last Ice Age, the first modern humans also left their traces here, including the famous Leman-and-Ower-Banks spearhead - the first documented Doggerland find - and some of the oldest art in the region. With the onset of the Holocene, our current era, Doggerland's inhabitants were increasingly confronted with climate change and rising sea levels, just as we are today. The Mesolithic hunter-gatherers lived in a rich, but constantly changing world - to which they successfully adapted. Ongoing submergence and a huge tsunami around 6150 BC marked the beginning of the end. A few centuries later, the last islands disappeared under the waves and with them the story of Doggerland was lost in time. This book brings this vanished world back to the surface.
The adoption of agriculture is one of the major developments in human history. Archaeological studies have demonstrated that the trajectories of Neolithisation in Northwest Europe were diverse. This ...book presents a study into the archaeology of the communities involved in the process of Neolithisation in the Lower Rhine Area (5500-2500 cal BC). It elucidates the role played by the indigenous communities in relation to their environmental context and in view of the changes that becoming Neolithic brought about.This work brings together a comprehensive array of excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area. Their analysis shows that the succession of Late Mesolithic, Swifterbant culture, Hazendonk group and Vlaardingen culture societies represents a continuous long-term tradition of inhabitation of the wetlands and wetland margins of this area, forming a culturally continuous record of communities in the transition to agriculture.After demonstrating the diversity of the Mesolithic, the subsequent developments regarding Neolithisation are studied from an indigenous perspective. Foregrounding the relationship between local communities and the dynamic wetland landscape, the study shows that the archaeological evidence of regional inhabitation points to long-term flexible behaviour and pragmatic decisions being made concerning livelihood, food economy and mobility. This disposition also influenced how the novel elements of Neolithisation were incorporated. Animal husbandry, crop cultivation and sedentism were an addition to the existing broad spectrum economy but were incorporated within a set of integrative strategies.For the interpretation of Neolithisation this study offers a complementary approach to existing research. Instead of arguing for a short transition based on the economic importance of domesticates and cultigens at sites, this
study emphasises the persistent traditions of the communities involved. New elements, instead of bringing about radical changes, are shown to be attuned to existing hunter-gatherer practices. By documenting indications of the mentalité of the inhabitants of the wetlands, it is demonstrated that their mindset remained essentially Mesolithic for millennia.This book is accompanied by a separate 422 page volume containing the appendices. These constitute a comprehensive inventory of 159, mostly excavated archaeological sites in the Lower Rhine Area.
Taxonomic identification of whale bones found during archaeological excavations is problematic due to their typically fragmented state. This difficulty limits understanding of both the past ...spatio-temporal distributions of whale populations and of possible early whaling activities. To overcome this challenge, we performed zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry on an unprecedented 719 archaeological and palaeontological specimens of probable whale bone from Atlantic European contexts, predominantly dating from
ca
3500 BCE to the eighteenth century CE. The results show high numbers of Balaenidae (many probably North Atlantic right whale (
Eubalaena glacialis
)) and grey whale (
Eschrichtius robustus
) specimens, two taxa no longer present in the eastern North Atlantic. This discovery matches expectations regarding the past utilization of North Atlantic right whales, but was unanticipated for grey whales, which have hitherto rarely been identified in the European zooarchaeological record. Many of these specimens derive from contexts associated with mediaeval cultures frequently linked to whaling: the Basques, northern Spaniards, Normans, Flemish, Frisians, Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians. This association raises the likelihood that early whaling impacted these taxa, contributing to their extirpation and extinction. Much lower numbers of other large cetacean taxa were identified, suggesting that what are now the most depleted whales were once those most frequently used.
Foraging for Farmers? Dusseldorp, Gerrit L.; Amkreutz, Luc W. S. W.
Praehistorische Zeitschrift,
12/2015, Letnik:
90, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Neue Studien betonen hinsichtlich der Neolithisierung Nordwesteuropas ein Mosaik verschiedener Prozesse. Dennoch scheint es möglich, einheitliche Merkmale zu identifizieren, die die Entwicklung der ...Landwirtschaft überregional beeinflussten. Der folgende Beitrag hebt die Bedeutung evolutionärer Prozesse für die Neolithisierung hervor, dies mit einem Fokus auf die südlichen Niederlande. Jene Regionen zeichnen sich durch vielfältige Biome aus, in denen die Übernahme der Landwirtschaft auf unterschiedlichem Wege erfolgte. Analysiert werden dabei sich jeweils ergebende Vorteile für die körperliche Verfasstheit der beteiligten Akteure durch die Kombination von Nahrungssuche und Landwirtschaft.
Die Autoren vermuten, dass die Ernährungsstrategien der Menschen von den vielfältigen Substraten unterschiedlich beeinflußt wurden, und dies sich darüber hinaus auch zwischen den Geschlechtern erkennen läßt. Bezüglich der Frage, ob und wie neolithische Innovationen übernommen wurden, werden daher für Männer und Frauen unterschiedliche Strategien sichtbar, die verfügbaren Resourcen jeweils „optimal“ zu nutzen.
Les études récentes ont souligné le caractère en mosaïque du processus de néolithisation dans le nordouest de l’Europe. Il est cependant possible d’identifier à travers les différentes régions certains objectifs majeurs qui ont influencé l’adoption de l’agriculture. Nous modélisons l’importance des processus évolutionnaires à la base de la néolithisation. Nous nous concentrons sur la partie méridionale des Pays-Bas, où l’agriculture a été adoptée suivant des trajectoires bien distincts dans différents biomes. Nous analysons cette transition selon les avantages physiques que la cueillette et l’agriculture ont pu apporter aux acteurs concernés. Nous proposons que divers substrats offrent différents avantages concernant l’adoption de l’agriculture et suggérons que ces avantages variaient selon les sexes, c’est-à-dire que les stratégies « optimales » par rapport à l’adoption et du mode d’adoption des innovations néolithiques différaient entre hommes et femmes.
Recent studies emphasise the mosaic character of the process of neolithisation in north-western Europe. However, some overarching motives influencing the uptake of farming can be identified across regions. We model the importance of evolutionary processes underlying neolithisation. We focus on the southern part of the Low Countries, where the uptake of agriculture follows distinct trajectories in different biomes. We analyse the transition in terms of fitness benefits that foraging and agriculture bestow on the actors involved. We suggest that different substrates offer different fitness benefits with regard to the uptake of farming and that these benefits differed between the sexes, leading to differing “optimal” strategies for males and females regarding whether and how to adopt Neolithic innovations.
More than 7000 years ago, groups of early farmers (the Linearbandkeramik, or LBK) spread over vast areas of Europe. Their cultural characteristics comprised common choices and styles of execution, ...with a central meaning and functionality attached to 'doing things a certain way', over an enormous geographical area. However, recent evidence suggests that the reality was much more varied and diverse. The central question of this book is the extent to which notions of 'uniformity' and 'diversity' have caused a wider shift in archaeological perspective. Using the LBK case study as a starting point, the volume brings together contributions by international specialists tackling the notion of cultural diversity and its explanatory power in archaeological analysis more generally. Through discussions of the domestic architecture, stone tool inventory, pottery traditions, landscape use and burial traditions of the LBK, this book provides a crucial reappraisal of the culture's potential for adaptability and change. Papers in the second part of the volume are devoted to archaeological case studies from around the globe in which the tension between diversity and uniformity has also proved controversial, including the Near Eastern Halaf culture, the North American Mississippian, the Pacific expansion of the Lapita culture, and the European Bell Beaker phenomenon. All provide exciting theoretical and methodological contributions on how the appreciation of cultural diversity as a whole can be moved forward. These papers expose diversity and uniformity as cultural strategies, and as such provide essential reading for scholars in archaeology and anthropology, and for anyone interested in the interplay between material culture and human social change.
Two neutron based techniques, neutron resonance capture analysis (NRCA) and time-of-flight neutron-diffraction (TOF-ND) have been used to determine the elemental composition and structure of a ...precious and very well preserved all-metal sword from the Bronze Age. This Buggenum sword was on loan from the National Museum of Antiquities (NMA) in Leiden (NL). NRCA and TOF-ND experiments have been carried out at a number of more or less identical positions of the sword. The tin-bronze ratio and the relative amounts of some minor elements (Sb, As, Ag, In) have been determined. The results of neutron diffraction measurements showed considerable tin-segregation, and clear indications of hardening on the edges of the blade. In addition, radiographs using Bremsstrahlung revealed the construction of the hilt–blade connection. The work was carried out at the EC Joint Research Centre IRMM in Geel (B) and at the ISIS facility of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK).
Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years
. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and ...poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period
. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116 individuals from 14 countries in western and central Eurasia, spanning between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago. We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe
, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. From at least 14,000 years ago, an ancestry related to this culture spread from the south across the rest of Europe, largely replacing the Magdalenian-associated gene pool. After a period of limited admixture that spanned the beginning of the Mesolithic, we find genetic interactions between western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, who were also characterized by marked differences in phenotypically relevant variants.
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