A punctuated model for the colonisation of the Late Glacial margins of northern Europe by Hamburgian hunter-gatherers
Jesper Pedersen, Andreas Maier, Felix Riede · 2021
The earliest Upper Palaeolithic movements into northern Europe appear at the very end of the Last Ice Age. Traditionally, the colonisation of this area is seen as a rather continuous process that, once started, persists without major interruptions. However, many lines of evidence are rather consistent with a significantly different understanding of this colonisation as a series of events with much more punctuated colonisation pulses and times in between where these areas were devoid of human presence. We here discuss the archaeological implications of such colonisation-decolonisation pulses with a focus on the Late Glacial Hamburgian culture. The archaeological record of the Hamburgian is discussed in relation to how pioneering forager communities are expected to behave in order to then evaluate to what extent the archaeological record matches the expectations. Archaeological evidence in the form of lithic projectile points and radiocarbon data is presented in tentative support of the punctuated nature of Hamburgian presence. Together, these lines of evidence strengthen the notion that the Hamburgian settlement of Northern Europe appeared in two distinct and brief episodes. The later of these episodes is connected with the distinct Havelte projectile points, which we interpret as the archaeological signatures of individual flintknappers who were temporally and socially closely related and who were present in southern Scandinavia over a period of only a few years. The model we present here is significantly different from the traditional interpretations of the Hamburgian but is, we argue, consistent with the current evidence.