The abrupt transition from Hamburgian to Federmessergruppen in southern Scandinavia – evidence for regional hunter-gatherer extinction?

Summary

The Hamburgian is associated with the initial pioneer human re-colonization of northern Europe during the Late Glacial. Whilst much recent research has focused on the dynamics of initial entry, this paper addresses the end of the Hamburgian, especially in its northernmost range of present-day southern Scandinavia. The difference in cultural signature between the Hamburgian culture’s late Havelte variant and its successor in the region, the Federmessergruppen, is striking and difficult to explain as a gradual transformation or adaptation given the decadal timescales involved. New data from the field and new dates conjoined with evidence for contemporaneous environmental changes are brought to bear on the question of whether this cultural historical transition may in fact reflect a population collapse, i.e. a regional forager extinction followed by a resettlement of the region shortly thereafter.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human adaptations to environmental change during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene - Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage