September 2020

B1: Pioneers of the North: Transitions and Transformations in Northern Europe Evidenced by High-Resolution Data Sets

Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene developments in Northern Europe in relation to our transformation phases and the geographical focus of the four different work packages of phase 2

Fig. 1 Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene developments in Northern Europe in relation to our transformation phases (T1-4) and the geographical focus of the four different work packages (WP) of phase 2. In these we will analyse diachronic aspects as projectile technology (WP1) or settlement and landscape patterns (WP2) as well as spatial aspects as the influence of the south on northern Germany (WP3) and the impact of southern Scandinavia on Northern Europe (WP4).

This project concentrates on cultural and socio-economic transformations in mobile hunter-gatherer groups during their colonisation of Northern Europe in the Late Palaeolithic period, as they were confronted with different and changing environmental conditions. To this end, well-preserved sites from Northwestern Europe and Scandinavia are studied with regard to the archaeological remains and connected environmental records. Thus, the dynamics of technological developments, subsistence strategies, mobility patterns and local and regional interaction networks will be examined and contextualised with changes in the environment.

Fig. 2 Impression of a Late Magdalenian planum at the French site Etiolles (left, Photo: ARPE) and a refitted core that was reduced starting with a crested blade of more than 50 cm length (right, Photo: J.-M. Yvon, CAD: N. Pigeot). Based on the several horizons and concentrations of this site, the variability of Magdalenian behaviours will be studied in WP 3 to understand the substratum from which the first wave of pioneers arose.