The early stages of agriculture in the Boreal forests of Northern Europe remain poorly understood. Although pottery appeared during the 6th millennium B.C., this has not been seen as an indication of a true Neolithic in the north. In later prehistory, vast parts of the region are thought to have remained a wilderness. In order to test these assumptions, a high‐resolution pollen analysis and an archaeological survey were carried out at Lake Huhdasjärvi, SE Finland. The results indicate signs of cultivation already by the early Neolithic, 5260–4260 B.C., and slash‐and‐burn cultivation concentrated on deciduous forests is recorded from ca. A.D. 600 onwards. By A.D. 930, an intensive form of swidden cultivation began in the coniferous forests, indicating a well‐established agricultural settlement. The discovery of Neolithic (late 6th millennium B.C.) buckwheat pollen suggests that the roots of agriculture in northernmost Europe may have to be searched for in China rather than the Near East.
A three-room housepit at the Meskäärtty site is located in an area where housepits are generally rare. Stone Age dwelling structures of comparable proportions are known mainly from coastal Ostrobothnia on the Finnish west coast. The ceramics associated with the Meskäärtty housepit are Late Comb Ware and Late Corded Ware, both of which exhibit similarities with the pottery found on the Estonian north coast. AMS-dates on carbonized organic remains attached to the sherds point to a period between the late 4th millennium and the late 3rd millennium cal BC.The objectives of this article are twofold. First, the Meskäärtty site is introduced, followed by a review of organic tempered ceramics around the south-eastern coast of Finland and the appearance of multi-room housepits in Finland. Some hybrid-like characteristics displayed by ceramics found in the extreme south-east of Finland suggest that the amalgamation of local pottery-making traditions and the Corded Ware tradition took place already before the emergence of Final Neolithic Kiukainen Ware. This article argues that the appearance of multi-room housepits in Finland is closely synchronous with the spread of the Corded Ware Culture to the north-eastern Baltic Sea. Therefore, the change in the house-building tradition towards larger, more oblong and multi-room housepits is seen as a consequence of cultural contacts.
Summary
The adoption of pottery in eastern Fennoscandia in the later sixth millennium BC has traditionally been understood in straightforward technological and practical terms, and as a development that did not mark other significant changes in local culture or ways of life. Recent research in the region, combined with new ideas about Neolithization in Eurasia more generally, nonetheless suggests that the adoption of pottery was associated with more fundamental cultural and environmental transformations than has previously been thought. This article brings together diverse old and new data from north‐eastern Europe and discusses the character and dynamics of cultural and human‐induced environmental change following the adoption of pottery. The aim is to provide a scenario of long‐term cultural changes and, in particular, to consider the significance and broader implications of the very practices of clay use and cultivation, as well as their links to wider cultural and environmental phenomena.
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