scholarly journals Decoration of bone and antler artefacts as an indication of Mesolithic networks (finds from a central Swedish Late Mesolithic site)

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 85-91
Author(s):  
Lars Larsson ◽  
Fredrik Molin
Keyword(s):  
Northern Europe ◽  
Southern Sweden ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The South ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
South Central ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
State Of Research ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Late Mesolithic

Our knowledge of Mesolithic decorated bone and antler tools from Scandinavia has mainly been based on finds from sites and single finds from Southern Scandinavia. However, recent excavations at a Late Mesolithic site at Strandvgen in Motala, south-central Sweden, have changed the state of research and revealed a large number of bone and antler tools, some of them with decorations. The site is located on the eastern shore of Lake Vttern, the second largest lake in the south of Sweden and at the only large outlet of the lake. The site was used during a number of centuries, with a concentration of radiocarbon dates around 7500-7000 cal. BP. The settlement at Strandvgen is the only site in this part of Scandinavia with a large number of finds of bone and antler. The location of the site was exceptional as it was easily available by contact links to the south and north as well as east and west. This is well manifested in the find material. Leister points are the single largest group of tools, with a total of more than 400 examples. A number of these are furnished with decoration in the form of small notches on the barbs more or less in systematic order, as well as cross-hatched motifs. A small number of other tools such as slotted daggers and antler objects with shaft holes are also decorated. In comparison with southern Sweden and Denmark, similarities are obvious concerning both the choice of motifs and the variety of their execution. The only other area in the Baltic region with a number of decorated objects is the East Baltic. However the chronological relevance is uncertain. For example one can find leister points with similarities to the finds at Strandvgen among the finds from Lake Lubāna in south-eastern Latvia. The question of how many of the motifs, and how they are executed is a pan-Mesolithic phenomenon within Northern Europe and how much can be related to specific regional markings.

Associations of Sphagnum rubellum Wils. on the bogs of the south-east part of Baltic region

2003 ◽  
pp. 50-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. A. Smagin ◽  
M. G. Napreenko
Keyword(s):  
Baltic Sea ◽  
Plant Cover ◽  
Karelian Isthmus ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The South ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
Kaliningrad Region ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Typical Habitat ◽  
New Syntaxa

The paper characterizes the 3 associations comprising plant communities with Sphagnum rubellum in the south-eastern part of the Baltic region. The new syntaxa differ from each other both in their floristic characters and the pronounced affinity to definite regional mire types and particular habitats. The ass. Drosero-Sphagnetum rubelli is typical of the relatively most thorough ranges. It is observed from the Kaliningrad region to the Karelian Isthmus and, according to the published reference, occurs even throughout the whole area around the Baltic Sea. Its most typical habitat is that of margins of mire lakes and pools. The ass. Eriophoro-Sphagnetum rubelli occurs in central plateaus of convex plateau-like bogs, typical of the areas adjacent to the Baltic Sea coast. It occupies extended flat mire ecotopes with the water level 0.2–0.25 m deep. The ass. Empetro-Sphagnetum rubelli is characteristic of the retrogressive complex in the convex bogs of the East-Baltic Province. It is mostly observed along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. Its stands are rather dynamic and unstable in both space and time. The presence of communities comprised by these 3 associations is an important vegetation character of the series of regional mire types. Assuming an association level of the respective syntaxa seems rational for the purposes of adequate reflection of plant cover diversity.

The Origin of Neolithic Culture in Northern Europe

Antiquity ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 23 (91) ◽  
pp. 129-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. G. Childe
Keyword(s):  
Northern Europe ◽  
Southern Sweden ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
Neolithic Culture ◽  
Northwest Germany ◽  
Shell Mounds ◽  
Expansive Group ◽  
Megalithic Tombs

Till 1948 the coherent record of farming in Northern Europe began with the neolithic culture represented in the Danish dysser (‘dolmens’) and most readily defined by the funnel-necked beakers, collared flasks and ‘amphorae’ found therein. As early as 1910 Gustav Kossinna had remarked that these distinctive ceramic types, and accordingly the culture they defined, were not confined to the West Baltic coastlands, but recurred in the valleys of the Upper Vistula and Oder to the east, to the south as far as the Upper Elbe and in northwest Germany and Holland too. He saw in this distribution evidence for the first expansion of Urindogermanen from their cradle in the Cimbrian peninsula. In the sequel Åberg filled in the documentation of this expansion with fresh spots on the distribution map and Kossinna himself distinguished typologically four main provinces or geographical groups—the Northern, Eastern, Southern and Western. Finally Jazdrzewski gave a standard account of the whole content of what had come to be called Kultura puharów lejkowatych, Trichterbecherkultur, or Tragtbaegerkulturen. As ‘Funnel-necked-beaker culture’ is a clumsy expression and English terminology is already overloaded with ‘beakers’, I shall use the term ‘First Northern’.The orgin of this vigorous and expansive group of cultivators and herdsmen has always been an enigma. Not even Kossinna imagined that the savages of the Ertebølle shell-mounds spontaneously began cultivating cereals and breeding sheep in Denmark. As dysser were regarded as megalithic tombs and as megaliths are Atlantic phenomena, he supposed that the bases of the neolithic economy were introduced from the West together with the ‘megalithic idea’. But the First Northern Farmers of the South and East groups did not build megalithic tombs. Moreover, in the last ten years an extension of the North group across southern Sweden as far as Södermannland has come to light, and these farmers too, though they used collared flasks and funnel-necked beakers, built no dolmens either. In any case there was nothing Western about the pottery from the Danish dysser, and Western types of arrow-head are conspicuously rare in Denmark.

scholarly journals A new eusuchian (Crocodylia) tooth from the Early or Middle Paleocene, with a description of the Early–Middle Paleocene boundary succession at Gemmas Allé, Copenhagen, Denmark

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 17-26
Author(s):  
Daniela Schwarz Wings ◽  
Jesper Milàn ◽  
Palle Gravesen
Keyword(s):  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Tooth Crown ◽  
Southern Sweden ◽  
Tooth Morphology ◽  
Rounded Apex ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Basal Conglomerate

A recently found crocodylian tooth crown from the basal conglomerate of the Middle Paleocene (Selandian) Lellinge Greensand Formation, differs morphologically from other finds of crocodylian teeth from the Paleocene of southern Scandinavia. The tooth is conical and blunt with a narrow rounded apex, and slightly curved along the axis of its length. The morphology of the tooth suggests it belongs to either the longirostrine eusuchian Aigialosuchus, which is known from the Campanian of southern Sweden, or to a member of the Alligatoridae which are the most common crocodylians in northern Europe in the Late Cretaceous. Gavialoid crocodylians, in particular Thoracosaurus which is known from the Danian limestome of the Limhamn quarry in southern Sweden and from the Faxe quarry in eastern Denmark, can be excluded because of their deviating tooth morphology. Regardless of its assignment, the tooth is interesting in a stratigraphic context as it demonstrates the existence of at least two crocodylian taxa in Scandinavia during the Early and Middle Paleocene.

scholarly journals Spatial cognition in landscape designations in the area of the Old European Hydronymy

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-84
Author(s):  
Rosemarie Lühr
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Spatial Cognition ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Spatial Relationships ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
The Baltic

Abstract Subject of the investigation are settlement names that refer to waters. These oikonyms are often the oldest. The research area is that of the Ancient European Hydronymy. The Old European hydronyms occur in Central Europe, in the Baltic region, in Southern Scandinavia, in the British Isles, in France, on the Iberian Peninsula and in Italy. The research question is, if the expression of spatial relationships in oikonyms with water words is a universal? It turns out to be also other naming strategies. The theoretical framework is Levinson’s (2008) description of spatial cognition. The connection of spatial cognition with landscape terms is new in toponomastics.

The Eastern Baltic

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valter Lang
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Entire Region ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The South ◽  
Burial Practices ◽  
South West ◽  
The Baltic

This chapter examines Iron Age funerary and domestic archaeological sites, and economic and cultural developments from c.500 BC–AD 550/600, in the east Baltic region (present day Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania). While the early pre-Roman Iron Age was to some extent a continuation of the late Bronze Age in material culture terms, many changes took place in the late pre-Roman Iron Age. At the change of era, new cultural trends spread over the east Baltic region, from the south-eastern shore of the Baltic to south-west Finland, which produced a remarkable unification of material culture over this entire region up to the Migration period. Differences in burial practices and ceramics, however, indicate the existence of two distinct ethnic groups, Proto-Finnic in the northern part of the region and Proto-Baltic to the south. Subsistence was based principally on agriculture and stock rearing, with minor variations in the economic orientation of different areas.

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL REVIEW

2001 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 541-558
Author(s):  
S. C. ROWELL
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
New Work ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Baltic

Since the breakdown of the Soviet Union and Swedish socialism the Baltic region has attracted more attention, although not perhaps as much as it might deserve, than since the 1930s. English-speaking readers have been presented with a magisterial survey of the northern world over a five hundred years' period. However, many of the old stereotypes of war, pestilence, and the rise of Sweden under Gustav Adolphus, the lion of the north, and of Russia under the delusively attractive despots, Peter I and Catherine II (both of whom were essentially Baltic animals), remain unchallenged. Over the past decade much new work has appeared in northern Europe to open a more intriguing and understandable vista – of Baroque vibrancy in art, literature, and architecture; remarkably resilient small towns and efficient manor economies; and powerful interacting religious and political mythologies that combine in a vision of ‘Gotho-Sarmatian’ unity.

scholarly journals Navigating Inland: Bronze Age Watercraft and the Lakes of Southern Sweden

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Nimura ◽  
Peter Skoglund ◽  
Richard Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Rock Art ◽  
Southern Sweden ◽  
Inland Lakes ◽  
Southern Scandinavia ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Lake Vänern

The rock art of southern Scandinavia is characterized by depictions of watercraft. The majority are close to the coast, and they have been the primary focus of research. Less attention has been paid to similar representations associated with two large inland lakes in southern Sweden. In this article we present the results of fieldwork around Lake Vänern and Lake Vättern and consider the relationship of this rock art to the better-known images on the coast. We explore the practicalities of navigating between the sea and the interior and suggest that there was an important contrast between an early eastern sphere extending to Lake Vättern from the Baltic and a later western sphere connecting Lake Vänern with the Atlantic.

Phylogeography of grass snakes (Natrix natrix) all around the Baltic Sea: implications for the Holocene colonization of Fennoscandia

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolin Kindler ◽  
Carolin Kindler ◽  
Henrik Bringsøe ◽  
Carolin Kindler ◽  
Henrik Bringsøe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Baltic Sea ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mitochondrial Lineage ◽  
Baltic Region ◽  
The South ◽  
The Baltic Sea ◽  
The Holocene ◽  
Natrix Natrix ◽  
The Baltic

We show that Fennoscandia was invaded in the Holocene by three distinct mitochondrial lineages of Natrix natrix. Two of these lineages arrived from the south, and one from the east. One of the ‘southern lineages’ is confined to Gotland, where also the second ‘southern lineage’ is found. The latter is widely distributed in the southwestern Baltic region, western Fennoscandia and on the Åland Islands, while the other lineage present on Gotland is only known from a few sites in the Baltic region. In addition, we recorded a third mitochondrial lineage in southern continental Finland, which was previously unknown from Fennoscandia. This lineage also occurs in the southeastern Baltic region and further east, suggesting that southern Finland was colonized from the east. Thus, the phylogeography of N. natrix matches a general paradigm for Fennoscandia, with Holocene invasions from the south and east.

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