Late Mesolithic Armature Variability in the Southern North Sea Basin: Implications for Forager-LinearbandkeramikContact Models of the Transition to Agriculture in Belgium and the Southern Netherlands

Abstract

Lithic armatures have been widely noted as key evidence for interpreting the role of indigenous Mesolithic traditions in the spread of the Early Neolithic Linearbandkeramik (LBK) culture, and therefore early agriculture, across temperate Europe. Their role as evidence for the continuity of Mesolithic ‘identities’ has been emphasized without the use of a unified, systematic recording methodology of armatures from both Late–Final Mesolithic (LM–FM) and LBK sites that places armatures in their broader context as part of projectile technologies of late hunter-gatherers and early farmers. In this paper, we present the results of recent research in the southern North Sea basin that utilized a systematic and unified recording methodology to analyse armature assemblages from LM–FM and LBK sites on an inter-regional scale. We report that there is much more inter-regional variability in armature assemblages during the LM than traditionally considered in efforts to interpret similarities and possible cultural transmission processes between Mesolithic and LBK populations. This paper calls for a reassessment of inter-regional LM variability in the construction of Mesolithic-LBK contact models and a focus that places armatures in their broader social and technological contexts.

Abrupt cooling events during the Early Holocene and their potential impact on the environment and human behaviour along the southern North Sea basin (NW Europe)

“…This trend persists during the Late Mesolithic among the trapezes (ca. 32% versus 8%) (Robinson et al ., , ).…”

Microliths and maritime mobility: a continental European-style Late Mesolithic flint assemblage from the Isles of Scilly

“…The precise origin of the Old Quay assemblage is difficult to establish as certain attributes (such as the use of flake blanks, the form of the petite base and style of retouch on the ventral surface) are subtly different to continental European assemblages, which themselves show significant inter-regional variability at this time (Robinson et al . 2013). The left lateralisation of the Old Quay microliths is, perhaps, a particularly important feature as it does not appear in French assemblages, but can be paralleled much farther east in the Rhine-Meuse-Scheldt region.…”

The oldest pottery in hunter-gatherer communitiesand models of Neolithisation of Eastern Europe

“…The early pottery in the Lower Volga region is accompanied by a stone industry, which, according to researchers of this region, have Mesolithic traits and could have been connected with the first stage in the distribution of ceramic traditions. This conservation of Mesolithic flint traditions in complexes accompanying the first pottery can be also found in different areas of Western and Eastern Europe (Lozovsky 2001;Polkovnikova 2003;Nikitin 2013.26;Sinyk 1986;Robinson et al 2013), although some researchers also outline the possibility that different complexes were mechanically mixed (Viskalin 2013).…”