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so the maritime landscape was also of great importance for travellers, migration,
communication and the exchange of goods (Westerdahl 2000 ). Detailed analyses of
the settlement pattern on the Danish island of Fyn show that during this period the
coastal zone formed a cultural landscape of unique character and function (Crumlin-
Pedersen et al. 1996 ). There can be no doubt that this situation can be generalized,
at least for the larger islands in the Baltic Sea during the first and second millennia
AD, but presumably also for the coastal zones on parts of the mainland.
Even though the reasons for and the intensity of the use of the landscape and
settlements in the coastal zone changed through the ages, it was common to all the
communities living there that they modified the utilized or occupied parts of the
landscape, e.g. by building houses, fishing fences or boat-landing facilities - and
also by leaving their refuse and rubbish on the sites (Jöns 2002 ).
Given the above-mentioned continuous displacement of the shoreline as a result
of the changing sea level and isostatic rebound, the people had to leave their coastal
settlements and move to other spots that presumably offered better conditions for
the future. Most of the abandoned sites fell into oblivion and were never occupied
again because the specific attractiveness that originally led to their utilization was
lost as a result of the changing environment.
Today, all the traces and remains of earlier activity on these deserted sites
have become an archaeological archive, full of information about a specific -
locally and chronologically limited - part of the history of mankind and the
environment.
15.2.1 Shore-Displacement Models as a Base for Dating
Prehistoric Sites
Most of the deserted coastal settlements have been eroded through the ages, by the
current in the case of inundated sites or by wind, frost, sun and rain in the case
of sites on dry land. In particular, structures, tools and refuse of organic material
such as wood, bone, antler and leather have often disappeared completely so that
the archaeological record of these sites consists almost entirely of inorganic finds
made of stone or ceramics. Due to the absence of organic material, a chronological
classification of these sites is only possible by means of a typological comparison
of the artefacts recovered from the site with those from better preserved sites. In the
case of sites with no diagnostic artefacts, it is often not possible to date them or even
assign them to an archaeological culture.
Especially in those parts of the Baltic Sea area where the glacio-isostatic rebound
has led to permanent land uplift, the information available on changes in the sea
level has traditionally been used by archaeologists to date such sites (Ling 2004 with
further references). In central and northern Sweden (Linden et al. 2006 , Berglund
2004 , 2008 ), Norway (Fuglestvedt 2008 ,Grimm 2006 , Gustafson 1999 ) and Finland
(Siiriäinen 1982 , Jussila 1995 ) analyses of sea-level curves and shore-displacement
models are of great importance for the dating of archaeological sites: the rule of
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