The reconstruction of Stone Age subsistence in Finland is almost solely based on the study of burned bone assemblages from settlement sites. Seal bones dominate Stone Age refuse fauna while bird and fish bones are almost absent. The problem of the absence of bird and fish bones has been acknowledged, but so far the dominance of seal bone has been taken as a sign of (specialized) seal hunting as the main subsistence activity. In this article we question the use of archaeological refuse fauna as the single basis for the study of hunter-gatherer subsistence. We conducted a series of experiments to test how interspecies differences in bone characteristics may bias our current understanding of Finnish prehistoric subsistence. Our preliminary results clearly show interspecies differences in bone combustion qualities and in bone preservation. Further structural and densitometric analyses reveal significant differences in the medullary cavity of seal vs. terrestrial mammal bones. Our results also open new perspectives concerning the use of bone as an additional fuel source in prehistoric hearths.
There was a period of reduced mobility, increased population density, and social complexity among hunter–gatherers in northern Bothnian prehistory between about 4050 and 2050 cal BC. We argue that this was made possible by a combination of physical and social factors that include the shortening of the coastline due to isostatic land uplift, the reduction of distances between major river mouths along the Bothnian coast, and the local variability in rate of shoreline displacement at individual river mouths.
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