Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
To sum up, environmental conditions in the Holocene were completely different
from those in the late Pleistocene. The people no longer depended almost entirely on
hunting one species - reindeer - but were also able to take advantage of the rich fish
resources in lakes and in the sea, to gather vegetables - especially roots and fruit -
and to hunt the locally available game and wild birds. This gave the Mesolithic com-
munities living around the Baltic rim new economic opportunities but also forced
them to develop new subsistence strategies (Terberger 2006b ). The result is well
known, thanks to the archaeological record for several inland and coastal sites that
date from the ninth to the fifth millennium cal. BC. Unlike the highly specialized late
Palaeolithic reindeer hunters, the Mesolithic people were generalists who adapted
their economic strategies to the exploitation of the many different kinds of resources
available in their vicinity.
The introduction of agriculture and animal husbandry during the Neolithic period
at the transition from the fifth to the fourth millennium BC led to a fundamen-
tal change in the economic system that also affected the occupation of the coastal
landscape. Settlements were moved to arable farmland away from the coast and
the demand for meat was increasingly covered by domestic animals. Although the
economic importance of game and marine food resources decreased considerably,
hunting, fishing and gathering were never abandoned. In fact, they were still very
much part of economic life (Hartz et al. 2007 ). Most of the traditional hunting and
fishing methods continued to be used and known coastal locations were occupied
on a seasonal basis.
As has already been pointed out, the coastal zone of the south-western Baltic rim
was very much affected by the changes that occurred. In particular, the dynamic
rise in sea level during the Littorina transgression, around 15 m in 600 years, led to
the flooding of whole landscapes since the second half of the seventh millennium:
this makes it an extraordinarily interesting area of research as far as the relationship
between the geo-system, eco-system, climate and socioeconomic system is con-
cerned (Harff et al. 2007 ). This was also the reason for the establishment of the
multi-disciplinary research project SINCOS (Sinking Coasts: Geosphere, Ecosphere
and Anthroposphere of the Holocene Southern Baltic Sea), which aims to recon-
struct the coastal morphogenesis, the palaeoclimatic and ecological conditions as
well as the settlement history of the area between the Oldenburger Graben and the
Oder estuary during the Littorina transgression. Within this project, archaeologi-
cal investigations were undertaken to obtain information on whether and how the
ancient human communities reacted in the face of coastal decline and the enormous
changes in their natural environment. A special focus is on whether they adapted
their economic systems, social structures and/or their communication networks in
reaction to these changes. The SINCOS research is concentrated in two areas, to
the west and east of the Darss Sill: the Wismar Bight as part of the Mecklenburgian
Bight in the west and Rügen Island in the east (Jöns et al. 2007 ).
In the discussion of the suitability of archaeological sites as sea-level index
points, particular attention is paid to a group of more than 20 submerged settle-
ments, today located at the bottom of the Wismar Bight at depths between 2.5 and
11 m below the present sea level (Fig. 15.9 ). Most of these were discovered during
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