The Laacher See-eruption (12,920 BP) and material culture change at the end of the Allerød in Northern Europe

Riede, Felix

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2007.05.007

Cited by 101 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…(24). The Federmesser culture had mostly disappeared from the Benelux near the end of the Younger Dryas (24)(25)(26). At Geldrop, their occupation horizon coincides with the Usselo horizon.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary

Hoesel

Hoek

Braadbaart

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The controversial Younger Dryas impact hypothesis suggests that at the onset of the Younger Dryas an extraterrestrial impact over North America caused a global catastrophe. The main evidence for this impact-after the other markers proved to be neither reproducible nor consistent with an impact-is the alleged occurrence of several nanodiamond polymorphs, including the proposed presence of lonsdaleite, a shock polymorph of diamond. We examined the Usselo soil horizon at Geldrop-Aalsterhut (The Netherlands), which formed during the Allerød/Early Younger Dryas and would have captured such impact material. Our accelerator mass spectrometry radiocarbon dates of 14 individual charcoal particles are internally consistent and show that wildfires occurred well after the proposed impact. In addition we present evidence for the occurrence of cubic diamond in glass-like carbon. No lonsdaleite was found. The relation of the cubic nanodiamonds to glass-like carbon, which is produced during wildfires, suggests that these nanodiamonds might have formed after, rather than at the onset of, the Younger Dryas. Our analysis thus provides no support for the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis.radiocarbon dating | carbon spherules | wildfire temperature | electron microscopy

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary

Hoesel

Hoek

Braadbaart

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…It is unlikely that this spatial distribution reflects a concentration of research, as the whole of Denmark has been intensively surveyed (Petersen 2009). The Bromme Culture arose relatively late in the Allerød and its restricted geographical range has been the subject of continued discussions regarding its origin (Eriksen 1999;Riede 2008;Pedersen 2009;Sørensen 2010). Different non-cultural causes have been proposed including the climatic and environmental changes that occurred during the Allerød (Mathiassen 1947;Fischer and Mortensen 1977;Johansson 2003;Pedersen and Petersen 2006).…”

Section: The Extent Of the Bromme Culture In Southern Scandinaviamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…caused a cultural split in the various groups of the Federmesser Culture. This cultural isolation may have caused a technological simplification and the loss of the bow and arrow technology in the Danish and northern German regions and led to the rise of the Bromme Culture (Riede 2008;Riede and Edinborough 2012). Sørensen (2010) suggests that the appearance of this culture and its technological simplifications was not due to cultural isolation but rather because there were rich and easily accessible flint resources available within its geographical area.…”

Section: The Extent Of the Bromme Culture In Southern Scandinaviamentioning

confidence: 99%

Living on the good soil: relationships between soils, vegetation and human settlement during the late Allerød period in Denmark

Mortensen

Henriksen

Bennike

2014

Veget Hist Archaeobot

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The immigration of woody plants, especially Betula (tree birch), is examined in relation to geomorphological regions in a compilation of Late-glacial plant macrofossil records from Denmark. The immigration of trees led to a large ecological transformation of the landscape and had a major effect on the flora and fauna available to Palaeolithic people. We show that soil type was a controlling factor in the development of vegetation during the Allerød and Younger Dryas periods. Following the first immigration of trees during the Allerød period, woods became established in the eastern part of Denmark, where ice advances from the Baltic had deposited calcareous and clayey sediments. The western and northern parts of Denmark that are characterised by more sandy and noncalcareous sediments remained treeless throughout the whole Late-glacial period. Finds from the Bromme Culture are concentrated in the region which was wooded, suggesting that the regional variable environment allowed local adaptations using the diverse resources available.

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“…Others have used population size decrease to explain instances of the loss of a technology, such as the abandonment of the bow-and-arrow in Northern Europe during the Late Glacial period [12,13]. Still others have invoked population size to explain cases of long-term material culture stability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The empirical case against the ‘demographic turn’ in Palaeolithic archaeology

Collard

Vaesen

Cosgrove

et al. 2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Recently, it has become commonplace to interpret major transitions and other patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record in terms of population size. Increases in cultural complexity are claimed to result from increases in population size; decreases in cultural complexity are suggested to be due to decreases in population size; and periods of no change are attributed to low numbers or frequent extirpation. In this paper, we argue that this approach is not defensible. We show that the available empirical evidence does not support the idea that cultural complexity in hunter-gatherers is governed by population size. Instead, ethnographic and archaeological data suggest that hunter-gatherer cultural complexity is most strongly influenced by environmental factors. Because all hominins were hunter-gatherers until the Holocene, this means using population size to interpret patterns in the Palaeolithic archaeological record is problematic. In future, the population size hypothesis should be viewed as one of several competing hypotheses and its predictions formally tested alongside those of its competitors.This article is part of the themed issue 'Major transitions in human evolution'.

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The Laacher See-eruption (12,920 BP) and material culture change at the end of the Allerød in Northern Europe

Cited by 101 publications

References 50 publications

Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary

Nanodiamonds and wildfire evidence in the Usselo horizon postdate the Allerød-Younger Dryas boundary

Living on the good soil: relationships between soils, vegetation and human settlement during the late Allerød period in Denmark

The empirical case against the ‘demographic turn’ in Palaeolithic archaeology

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