Researchers agree that domesticated plants were introduced into southeast Europe from southwest Asia as a part of a Neolithic “package,” which included domesticated animals and artifacts typical of ...farming communities. It is commonly believed that this package reached inland areas of the Balkans by ∼6200 calibrated (cal.) BC or later. Our analysis of the starch record entrapped in dental calculus of Mesolithic human teeth at the site of Vlasac in the Danube Gorges of the central Balkans provides direct evidence that already by ∼6600 cal. BC, if not earlier, Late Mesolithic foragers of this region consumed domestic cereals, such as Triticum monococcum, Triticum dicoccum, and Hordeum distichon, which were also the main crops found among Early Neolithic communities of southeast Europe. We infer that “exotic” Neolithic domesticated plants were introduced to southern Europe independently almost half a millennium earlier than previously thought, through networks that enabled exchanges between inland Mesolithic foragers and early farming groups found along the Aegean coast of Turkey.
In Central Europe, only a few caves with ancient drawings on the walls are known. During the past years, simple lines and sketches made of charcoal or smearing traces from torches are found mainly in ...less accessible locations in some caves of the Slovak Karst. Previous attempts to date these findings were unsuccessful since the painted layers were too thin to allow sampling and enable routine AMS dating. Now the application of the small mass radiocarbon accelerator mass-spectrometry (AMS) technique developed at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) made possible successful 14C determinations for a set of cave drawings and markings from the Slovak Karst. This research confirmed the prehistoric/protohistoric nature of the drawings/sketches in Čikova Diera, Silická Ľadnica, Ardovská and Domica Caves. Moreover, this research widens the scope for prehistoric rock art dating, one of the major constrains in rock art studies.
Contemporaneity of spatially distinct activity areas at prehistoric sites is often inferred based on lithic refit connections alone. These connections are, in addition, only rarely discussed in ...detail, nor are they explicitly subjected to any form of critical assessment. In this paper, we present a combined use of Bayesian modeling of
14
C-dates, raw material characterizations and lithic refitting to investigate the occurrence of interconnected artefact clusters at the Belgian Mesolithic site of Kerkhove. Besides this, a set of parameters is presented that is employed to control the reliability of the refit connections. The three proxies applied in this paper suggest that the Early Mesolithic occupation of the site was organized as two diachronic and more or less parallel alignments of artefact clusters. Based on the lithic refitting results, two scenarios can be considered to explain the formation histories of these linear arrangements. The individual artefact clusters incorporated within them were either occupied in a strictly contemporaneous manner or in a (partly) sequential manner.
Twelve pollen-inferred aridity major and minor events (S1 to S12) have been identified at Salines playa lake (SE Iberian Peninsula, 475 m asl, 38° 30′ 02″ N 00° 53′ 18″ W) from the Lateglacial to the ...Early Holocene (Boreal). These dry events consist of an increase in the aridity quotient calculated as a function of selected pollen taxa at 13.4, 13, 12.55, 12.2, 11.9, 11.45, 11, 10.6, 10.3, 10, 9.5 and 8.3 ka cal BP. These dry events correspond to the previous identified cold spells such as the Younger Dryas, as well as the 8, 7, 6 and 5 Bond events, and 11.4 and 9.3 events. This climate record highlights the complex glacial-interglacial transition in extra-tropical latitudes, with centennial-scale abrupt climate fluctuations, a signature scarcely recorded in other palaeoecological records of the SE Iberian Peninsula. This work has major implications for the study of human socio-ecological systems and resilience in SE Iberia during the Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic periods.
We present radiometric, palaeoclimatological, palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data for the period 40 000–8000 cal BP in the Jura Mountains (eastern France). These mountains culminate at ...∼1700 m a.s.l. and are today characterised by a semi-continental climate. During the Last Glacial Maximum, the range supported a local ice cap. While recent data suggest a possible early ice-cap development during MIS 4, the chronology of the regional LGM and following deglaciation has still to be refined. The complete disappearance of the local ice cap at ca 17 000–16 600 cal BP marked the beginning of accumulation of sediment archives in the Jurassian lakes and mires, which favoured the reconstruction of past changes in climatic and environmental conditions, in addition to faunal remains found in caves and in archaeological sites. Three main successive stages may be distinguished regarding the history of societies. The first stage at ca 40 000–18 700 cal BP was characterized by very few archaeological sites with only discontinuous intermittent occupations, always located outside the Jura range. The second stage, around 18 700–11 700 cal BP, corresponded to an increase in the population density, as suggested by an increasing number of archaeological sites and a progressive colonisation of elevated areas of the Jura Mountains. The third stage at ca 11 700–8000 cal BP coincided with a reinforcement of settlement in the lowland areas as well as a development of long-term occupations in elevated areas. The millennial-scale GS-1 cold event had a more long-lasting and stronger impact on societies than did the 200 year-long 8.2 ka cold event.
Despite extensive research and excavations across the central Balkans, Early Holocene sites have so far been documented only in the Iron Gates region – for which there are several possible ...explanations. Some scholars argue that the apparent lack of Mesolithic sites is due to inadequate research efforts in the region, while others suggest that the ecological conditions in the central Balkans during the Early Holocene may not have been favourable to the subsistence of hunter-gatherer communities. Contrary to previous beliefs, recent investigations of caves in eastern Serbia have revealed that humans inhabited the region during the Mesolithic. Traces of settlement of Mesolithic groups, dating back to the 7th millennium cal BC and employing comparable technology and economic practices to Mesolithic communities in other parts of the Balkan Peninsula, have been documented at the Pešterija Cave, situated south of Pirot in southeastern Serbia. The fact that the site is located relatively close to the oldest Neolithic sites in the Iron Gates and northwest Bulgaria, and is potentially contemporaneous with them, offers a completely new perspective on the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic in this part of the Balkans.
This article examines the relationship between the archaeology of the Mesolithic and the broader archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Bibliographic reviews of articles presented at past ...MESO conferences and recent high-ranking Mesolithic research publications are compared to content reviews of contributions towards previous
conferences. The results of these are presented as evidence to suggest that, whilst Mesolithic archaeologists consume the results of the broader field of hunter-gatherer research, we do not contribute to this field as much as might be expected. We argue that this lack of engagement impoverishes both Mesolithic archaeology and hunter-gatherer studies and that closer collaboration between these fields would open up new avenues for interdisciplinary research with the capacity to address the challenges of hunter-gatherer societies living around the world today.
La Sicilia ha restituito una documentazione archeologica che consente un focus su due temi principali, elaborati in questo testo: le identita plurali degli ultimi cacciatori-raccoglitori mesolitici e ...la variabilita delle loro espressioni culturali; la capacita in periodi preneolitici di costruire rotte marittime. Quesťultimo comportamento ha permesso la diffusione suile isole del Mediterraneo di comunità ehe in modo pionieristico hanno raggiunto la Sicilia, il blocco corso-sardo, Cipro, probabilmente Creta e le coste orientali della Spagna. ĽAutore presenta la documentazione archeologica relativa al Mesolitico e sottolinea il ruolo del mare come percorso di osmosi culturale e non come confine e limite alie comunicazioni.
The European far north is an improbable location for a large prehistoric hunter-gatherer cemetery. Tainiaro, 80km south of the Arctic Circle, was first excavated four decades ago but the unpublished ...findings and their potential significance have evaded wider recognition. Despite the absence of skeletal evidence, dozens of fifth-millennium BC pits have been tentatively interpreted as burials. Here, the authors present the first analytical and comparative overview of the site. Many of the pits are consistent in form with those used for inhumation at contemporaneous sites suggesting that Tainiaro is one of the largest Stone Age cemeteries in northern Europe and raising questions about the cultural and subsistence practices of prehistoric societies in the subarctic.
Development of the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) before 300 thousand years ago (ka) raises the question of how environmental change influenced the evolution of behaviors characteristic of early
We ...use temporally well-constrained sedimentological and paleoenvironmental data to investigate environmental dynamics before and after the appearance of the early MSA in the Olorgesailie Basin, Kenya. In contrast to the Acheulean archeological record in the same basin, MSA sites are associated with a dramatically different faunal community, more pronounced erosion-deposition cycles, tectonic activity, and enhanced wet-dry variability. As early as 615 ka, aspects of Acheulean technology in this region imply that greater stone material selectivity and wider resource procurement coincided with an increased pace of land-lake fluctuation, potentially anticipating the adaptability of MSA hominins.
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