Population collapse or human resilience in response to the 9.3 and 8.2 ka cooling events: A multi-proxy analysis of Mesolithic occupation in the Scheldt basin (Belgium)

The Neolithization Process in the Lower-Scheldt Basin (Belgium, mid-6th to mid-4th Millennium cal BC) from a Lithic Technological Perspective

“…In this sense the LM differs substantially from the Early Mesolithic, which is characterized by a predominant use of local flint of mediocre quality in view of producing irregular short blade(let)s (Perdaen et al, 2008). This marked change in raw material circulation, which most likely started already during the Middle Mesolithic, probably reflects fundamental changes in mobility and exchange networks in response to changing environment and raw material quality demands (Crombé et al, 2011;Van Maldegem et al, 2021). Indeed, the production of the regular blade(let)s to be modified into trapezes seems to have required the use of larger and better quality volumes of raw material, extracted from (near-)primary context rather than the locally available frost-fractured pebble flint.…”

Evidence of the Storegga Tsunami 8200 BP? An Archaeological Review of Impact After a Large-Scale Marine Event in Mesolithic Northern Europe

“…Another option is to study site distribution patterns. Changes in preferred location of sites may reflect different types of mobility, or an increase or decrease in sedentism (Bjerck 1989;Bergsvik 2001Bergsvik , 2002bMaldegem et al, 2021). Such approach has previously proved fruitful, like at the Kuril island close to Japan where a change in settlement pattern was detected after tsunamis had hit the coast in the Holocene (Fitzhugh 2012).…”

“…Identified troughs in the generated curves representing demography during the Mesolithic are interpreted as signalling population decline (see also Solheim and Persson 2018;Damm et al, 2019;Bergsvik et al, 2021;Mithen and Wicks 2021). Other such studies, however, have either found the effects of both these events to be less obviously related to any apparent changes in demography, or less confident in their attribution of significance (Griffiths and Robinson 2018;Maldegem et al, 2021). If nothing else, these approaches clearly highlight the variable effects that changing the study area and data included can have on the conclusion that is reached.…”

Evaluating the impact of the Storegga tsunami on Mesolithic communities in Northumberland

“…Using proxies of the number of radiocarbondated sites, studies have shown there was a sharp population decline in Northern Britain immediately after the concurrent events of 8200 BP (Figure 2B; Waddington and Wicks, 2017;Mithen and Wicks, 2021). Similar decreases were also seen in Norway (Bergsvik et al, 2021), but not in areas of continental Europe distal from the tsunami (Griffiths and Robinson, 2018;Van Maldegem et al, 2021). The population decline in Northern Britain was estimated using the method of summed calibrated probability distribution (SCPD) (Shennan and Edinborough, 2007;Porčić et al, 2016).…”