Palaeogeographic Model for the SW Estonian Coastal Zone of the Baltic Sea - The Baltic Sea Basin - page 184

Sea transgression lowstand at about 9,200-8,800 cal. years BP (Table 8.1 ; Fig. 8.3 ) .
Our reconstruction shows that at about 9,000 cal. years BP these dwelling sites
were situated about 0.5-4.5 m above and about 2 km from the coastline on the left
bank of the ancient Pärnu River (Fig. 8.7f ) . Dwelling sites were located closer to
the seashore than in the case of the Pulli settlement, probably due to the seal diet,
which was not the case for the people of Pulli, whose main means of subsistence
were elk and beaver hunting and pike-perch fishing (Veski et al. 2005 ) . Judging
from the animal bones, one may assume that the sites were at least inhabited in
spring - the best time for taking ringed seal ( Phoca hispida ) and pike-perch ( Sander
lucioperca ) - although the choice of location in the river mouth (Fig. 8.7f ) and
general Late Mesolithic contexts might even justify the assumption of year-round
base camps (Kriiska and Lõugas 2009 ) . Terrestrial conditions were interrupted in
the Sindi-Lodja and in other buried organic matter sites (Table 8.1 ) , when the rising
level of the Littorina Sea submerged the area (Fig. 8.7 g ). Similar to Ancylus Lake,
several Littorina Sea buried organic matter sites (Kolga, Vaskrääma, Rannametsa in
Table 8.1 ) were also located in the reconstructed coastal zone (Fig. 8.7 g ). Our model
of water-level change suggests that the Littorina Sea inundated settlement sites at
about 8,500-8,400 cal. years BP just before the culmination of the transgression
(Fig. 8.3 ) .
Water-level rise during the Littorina Sea transgression was slower compared with
the Ancylus Lake transgression, as reflected by inundated peat layers from different
altitudes (Fig. 8.3 ) . The Littorina Sea transgression culminated in the Pärnu area
at about 7,300 cal. years BP. Sediment stratigraphies show only one pre-Littorina
buried organic layer for the Pärnu area (Veski et al. 2005 ) and do not assert the
multi-transgressive pattern of the Littorina Sea, which is reported from Blekinge
(Berglund et al. 2005 ) and the Karelian Isthmus in NW Russia (Miettinen et al.
2007 ) . These low-magnitude (around 1 m) short-term oscillations did not result in
extensive peat formation in the Pärnu area, which could be evidence for a multi-
transgressive Littorina Sea.
The relatively rapid global sea rise slowed down and isostatic uplift began to
dominate in the Pärnu area after 7,300 cal. years BP, causing regressive shore dis-
placement and peatland formation between the highest Littorina Sea and present-day
coastlines. The beginning of peat formation in Kõrsa and Tolkuse bogs (Fig. 8.3 ;
Table 8.1 ) combined with shoreline tilting data (Fig. 8.5 ) suggests that the fall in
water level was most rapid immediately after the transgression and gradually slowed
down during the late Holocene. The relative fall in sea level (taking place at an aver-
age rate of 1 mm/year) together with regressive shore displacement still continues
in the area, as shown by the sea-level data for the last century (Vallner et al. 1988 ;
Ekman 1996 ) .
The late Mesolithic and Neolithic settlement sites at Sindi-Lodja III and Neolithic
sites Jõekalda, Lemmetsa I and II and Malda all formed in conditions of a regressive
coastline (Kriiska and Lõugas 2009 ; Fig. 8.7i ) . Sindi-Lodja III (dated typologi-
cally between 7,000 and 4,000 cal. years BP) and Jõekalda (dated typologically
between 6,200 and 4,000 cal. years BP) settlement sites were located about 2-3
m above the Littorina Sea at the mouth of the ancient Pärnu River (Kriiska and