- Archeologist and quaternary geologistedit
In any attempt to understand the settlement structures at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Gonnersdorf, a cardinal problem is the question of multiple, superimposed phases of occupation. This is the case also with Concentration III. In this... more
In any attempt to understand the settlement structures at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Gonnersdorf, a cardinal problem is the question of multiple, superimposed phases of occupation. This is the case also with Concentration III. In this paper the problem of multiple occupations is investigated in two different ways. Our first step will be to describe the settlement features in a 'traditional' way. Because six different raw materials were used at Concentration III, some further interesting phenomena could be investigated: firstly, differences between the raw materials in the proportions of stone artefacts in pits; secondly, differences in the tool assemblages, and thirdly, differences in the spatial distributions of tools according to type of raw material. The second part will deal with two related methods of spatial analysis, the ring and sector methods, bringing out on the one hand differences between the raw materials in the distributions of tools in rings 0.5 m wide aro...
Abstract The first Middle Palaeolithic artefacts to turn up in situ in boulder sand (erosional residue of glacial till) were found in 2011. The open-air site is located on the Saalian till plateau in the northern Netherlands, not far from... more
Abstract The first Middle Palaeolithic artefacts to turn up in situ in boulder sand (erosional residue of glacial till) were found in 2011. The open-air site is located on the Saalian till plateau in the northern Netherlands, not far from the city of Assen, the capital of the province of Drenthe. The finds from a trial excavation comprise flakes, blades, cores and retouched tools. The latter category consists predominantly of handaxes, but a few side-scrapers and backed knives are also present. Apart from erratic Baltic flint, of which most artefacts are made, raw materials include quartzitic sandstone, quartzite and, remarkably, halleflinta (‘rock-flint’). The assemblage is exceptional because of the many handaxes that dominate the tool spectrum, leading the authors to suggest that butchering activities played a major role in the formation of the assemblage. One of the reasons for Neanderthals to frequent this location, which is situated near a stream valley close to the confluence with a small tributary, might be the presence of relatively good-quality flint nodules and fairly large slabs of halleflinta . The site is one of the northernmost Middle Palaeolithic occurrences in the Netherlands – in Europe as well – and obviously postdates the Saalian glaciation (MIS 6). ‘Assen’ most likely dates to MIS 3 or MIS 5a/5c of the Weichselian. The presence of many relatively small (sub)cordiform and (sub)triangular handaxes indicates a cultural affiliation with the Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition, Type A. The site is situated near the northern limit of the occupation range of Middle Palaeolithic hominins, and the lithic assemblage is comparable to that from several other sites in the northern part of the North European Plain.
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Research Interests: Mesolithic and Dating
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Research Interests: Technology and Typology
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This paper discusses spatial analysis at site level. It is suggested that spatial analysis has to proceed in several levels, from global to more detailed questions, and that optimum resolution should be estab-lished when applying any... more
This paper discusses spatial analysis at site level. It is suggested that spatial analysis has to proceed in several levels, from global to more detailed questions, and that optimum resolution should be estab-lished when applying any quantitative methods in this field. As an ...
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RING & SECTOR ANALYSIS, AND SITE'IT'ON GREENLAND* DICK STAPERT Vakgroep Archeologie, Groningen, Netherlands LYKKE JOHANSEN Institutfor Arkerologi og Etnologi, Ktbenhavn, Denmark ABSTRACT: A technique for applying the ring and... more
RING & SECTOR ANALYSIS, AND SITE'IT'ON GREENLAND* DICK STAPERT Vakgroep Archeologie, Groningen, Netherlands LYKKE JOHANSEN Institutfor Arkerologi og Etnologi, Ktbenhavn, Denmark ABSTRACT: A technique for applying the ring and sector method to grid ...
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Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this... more
Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this evidence, however, dates to the Late Glacial, the period when Northern Europe was repopulated by colonising foragers. A human parietal bone and a decoratedbovidmetatarsusrecentlyrecovered from the floor of the North Sea have been datedtothiscrucialtransitionalperiod.They are set against the background of significant climatic and environmental changes and a major technological and sociocultural transformation. These discoveries also reaffirm the importance of continental shelves as archaeological archives.
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Samenvatting In februari werd in het gerenommeerde archeologische tijdschrift Antiquity een artikel gepubliceerd over de oudste mens van Nederland en de oudste kunst uit de Noordzee (Amkreutz et al. 2018). Beide vondsten zijn meer dan... more
Samenvatting
In februari werd in het gerenommeerde archeologische tijdschrift Antiquity een artikel gepubliceerd over de oudste mens van Nederland en de oudste kunst uit de Noordzee (Amkreutz et al. 2018). Beide vondsten zijn meer dan 13.000 jaar oud. Ze zijn uiterst zeldzame aanwijzingen voor de herbewoning van noordelijk Europa door de moderne mens na de kou van het laatste glaciale maximum van de laatste ijstijd. Deze bijdrage is een samenvatting van het betreffende artikel.
Summary
In February, a paper was published in the well-known archaeological journal Antiquity on the oldest human remains and the oldest art from the North Sea (Amkreutz et al. 2018). Both finds date to more than 13.000 years ago. They are very rare clues of the reoccupation of northern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum of the last Ice Age. This contribution is a summary of that article.
In februari werd in het gerenommeerde archeologische tijdschrift Antiquity een artikel gepubliceerd over de oudste mens van Nederland en de oudste kunst uit de Noordzee (Amkreutz et al. 2018). Beide vondsten zijn meer dan 13.000 jaar oud. Ze zijn uiterst zeldzame aanwijzingen voor de herbewoning van noordelijk Europa door de moderne mens na de kou van het laatste glaciale maximum van de laatste ijstijd. Deze bijdrage is een samenvatting van het betreffende artikel.
Summary
In February, a paper was published in the well-known archaeological journal Antiquity on the oldest human remains and the oldest art from the North Sea (Amkreutz et al. 2018). Both finds date to more than 13.000 years ago. They are very rare clues of the reoccupation of northern Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum of the last Ice Age. This contribution is a summary of that article.
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Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this... more
Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this evidence, however, dates to the Late Glacial, the period when Northern Europe was repopulated by colonising foragers. A human parietal bone and a decorated bovid metatarsus recently recovered from the floor of the North Sea have been datedtothiscrucialtransitionalperiod.They are set against the background of significant climatic and environmental changes and a major technological and sociocultural transformation. These discoveries also reaffirm the importance of continental shelves as archaeological archives.
Research Interests:
Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this... more
Archaeological evidence from the submerged North Sea landscape has established the rich diversity of Pleistocene and Early Holocene ecosystems and their importance to huntergatherer subsistence strategies. Comparatively little of this evidence, however, dates to the Late Glacial, the period when Northern Europe was repopulated by colonising foragers. A human parietal bone and a decorated bovid metatarsus recently recovered from the floor of the North Sea have been dated to this crucial transitional period. They are set against the background of significant climatic and environmental changes and a
major technological and sociocultural transformation. These discoveries also reaffirm the importance of continental shelves as archaeological archives.
major technological and sociocultural transformation. These discoveries also reaffirm the importance of continental shelves as archaeological archives.
Research Interests:
This paper presents a review of AMS radiocarbon dating evidence for human occupation of Britain during the Late-glacial Interstadial. The dates are all on humanly modified materials, including artefacts, and on human bone. The CalPal... more
This paper presents a review of AMS radiocarbon dating evidence for human occupation of Britain during the Late-glacial Interstadial. The dates are all on humanly modified materials, including artefacts, and on human bone. The CalPal program is used to test whether the earliest evidence of human presence shows any correlation with more widespread climatic events, and if the British chronology differs significantly from that of neighbouring regions of northwest Europe. In the second part of the paper a number of well-dated sites with British Late Upper Palaeolithic ‘Creswellian’ technology are examined and compared with lithic assemblages from The Netherlands and Belgium. The main conclusions of this work are that expansion of human populations into the northern edge of the upland zone just before or at the beginning of GI-1 was followed by repopulation of the British Isles possibly with very little time-lag. The British Creswellian sites offer evidence of this earliest resettlement, which is mainly focused on the upland margins of western and central Britain. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This paper presents a review of AMS radiocarbon dating evidence for human occupation of Britain during the Late-glacial Interstadial. The dates are all on humanly modified materials, including artefacts, and on human bone. The CalPal... more
This paper presents a review of AMS radiocarbon dating evidence for human occupation of Britain during the Late-glacial Interstadial. The dates are all on humanly modified materials, including artefacts, and on human bone. The CalPal program is used to test whether the earliest evidence of human presence shows any correlation with more widespread climatic events, and if the British chronology differs significantly from that of neighbouring regions of northwest Europe. In the second part of the paper a number of well-dated sites with British Late Upper Palaeolithic Creswellian technology are examined and compared with lithic assemblages from The Netherlands and Belgium. The main conclusions of this work are that expansion of human populations into the northern edge of the upland zone just before or at the beginning of GI-1 was followed by repopulation of the British Isles possibly with very little time-lag. The British Creswellian sites offer evidence of this earliest resettlement, which is mainly focused on the upland margins of western and central Britain. Copyright
Flint implements with rounded ends, excavated at several Late Palaeolithic sites in Denmark and the Netherlands, are described and interpreted as strike-a-lights used in combination with pyrites. Experiments were carried out; the use-wear... more
Flint implements with rounded ends, excavated at several Late Palaeolithic sites in Denmark and the Netherlands, are described and interpreted as strike-a-lights used in combination with pyrites. Experiments were carried out; the use-wear traces on the experimental pieces are similar to those occurring on the prehistoric specimens. It is concluded that the pyrite technique for fire production most probably predated wood-on-wood techniques, both in Europe and Greenland.
A bruised blade of the late-Ahrensburgian in Drenthe and some remarks on Ahrensburgian ‘sites’ In this paper a ‘bruised blade’ is described: a large blade somewhat more than 13 cm in length, with heavy bifacial damage along one of the... more
A bruised blade of the late-Ahrensburgian in Drenthe and some remarks on Ahrensburgian ‘sites’
In this paper a ‘bruised blade’ is described: a large blade somewhat more than 13 cm in length, with heavy bifacial damage along one of the edges. The blade was recovered by the late Hendrik Kalsbeek somewhere in the province of Drenthe; the exact findspot is unknown. The blade fits ventrally/dorsally with a second large blade that does not show such heavy damage. Both blades can be described as ‘core-correction blades’: not regular blades but blades that were struck off to remove steps or hinges, in order to allow further successful exploitation of the core. The core from which these blades were obtained had a length of over 16 cm, probably 20 cm or more. On the basis of parallels in northern France and southern England, and the presence of gloss patina, we attribute this remarkable piece to the Late Ahrensburgian. ‘Bruised blades’ are also known from at least one other site in the Netherlands, and from Germany and Denmark as well. In our opinion, sites with bruised blades should not be placed in a separate cultural tradition, the ‘Belloisian’, as advocated by French authors. In this paper also two alleged findspots of the Ahrensburgian in the northern Netherlands are discussed: Sintjohannesga in the province of Friesland and Havelterberg in the province of Drenthe. These entered the literature via the late A.M. Wouters (deceased in 2001). Our conclusion is that these sites never existed; we are dealing here with ‘findspot-forgeries’. Mr Wouters is also associated with many other archaeological forgeries of various types; we suggest that all of his ‘finds’ and ‘sites’ should be removed from our records unless independent sources can prove their authenticity.
In this paper a ‘bruised blade’ is described: a large blade somewhat more than 13 cm in length, with heavy bifacial damage along one of the edges. The blade was recovered by the late Hendrik Kalsbeek somewhere in the province of Drenthe; the exact findspot is unknown. The blade fits ventrally/dorsally with a second large blade that does not show such heavy damage. Both blades can be described as ‘core-correction blades’: not regular blades but blades that were struck off to remove steps or hinges, in order to allow further successful exploitation of the core. The core from which these blades were obtained had a length of over 16 cm, probably 20 cm or more. On the basis of parallels in northern France and southern England, and the presence of gloss patina, we attribute this remarkable piece to the Late Ahrensburgian. ‘Bruised blades’ are also known from at least one other site in the Netherlands, and from Germany and Denmark as well. In our opinion, sites with bruised blades should not be placed in a separate cultural tradition, the ‘Belloisian’, as advocated by French authors. In this paper also two alleged findspots of the Ahrensburgian in the northern Netherlands are discussed: Sintjohannesga in the province of Friesland and Havelterberg in the province of Drenthe. These entered the literature via the late A.M. Wouters (deceased in 2001). Our conclusion is that these sites never existed; we are dealing here with ‘findspot-forgeries’. Mr Wouters is also associated with many other archaeological forgeries of various types; we suggest that all of his ‘finds’ and ‘sites’ should be removed from our records unless independent sources can prove their authenticity.
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In deze bijdrage bespreken wij Neanderthaler-artefacten uit de wijdere omgeving van Emmen in zuidoostelijk Drenthe. Dit artikel is bedoeld als een aanvulling op enkele regionale overzichten die in de afgelopen jaren zijn verschenen. Het... more
In deze bijdrage bespreken wij Neanderthaler-artefacten uit de wijdere omgeving van Emmen in zuidoostelijk Drenthe. Dit artikel is bedoeld als een aanvulling op enkele regionale overzichten die in de afgelopen jaren zijn verschenen. Het betreft overzichten van midden-paleolithische vondsten rond het glaciale bekken van Steenwijk in Drenthe en Overijssel (Stapert et al., 2008; Niekus et al., 2014) en uit de omgeving van Zeijen in noordelijk Drenthe (Stapert et al., 2015). De uiteindelijke doelstellingen van deze inventarisaties zijn o.a. om zicht te krijgen op de dateringen van de vondsten, het gebruik van het landschap en de bewoningsgeschiedenis van Neanderthalers in Noord-Nederland. De typologie of vormenrijkdom van werktuigen en de geologie van vindplaatsen kunnen bij het beantwoorden van deze vragen een rol spelen. De meeste artefacten uit de omgeving van Emmen zijn niet eerder gepubliceerd en een selectie, bestaande uit de werktuigen en de artefacten van de grotere vindplaatsen, wordt hier voor het eerst afgebeeld. Basisgegevens over de vindplaatsen en de artefacten zijn opgenomen in Tabel 1; voor de ligging van de vindplaatsen zie de AHN-kaart (Afb. 1).
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In deze rapportage worden de resultaten besproken van een inventarisatie van 24 privécollecties met in totaal 1203 (vuur)stenen artefacten waarvan het merendeel afkomstig is uit de megasuppletie (2011) van de Zandmotor voor de kust bij... more
In deze rapportage worden de resultaten besproken van een inventarisatie van 24 privécollecties met in totaal 1203 (vuur)stenen artefacten waarvan het merendeel afkomstig is uit de megasuppletie (2011) van de Zandmotor voor de kust bij Ter Heijde. De artefacten zijn afkomstig uit offshore wingebied Q16F,H. Op basis van typologische en technologische kenmerken van de artefacten, deels in combinatie met de post-depositionele oppervlakteveranderingen en grondstofgebruik, kon de assemblage in een aantal perioden worden onderverdeeld. De oudste artefacten rekenen we tot de ‘Rhenen Industrie’ en behoren tot het Acheuléen, met een geschatte ouderdom tussen ca. 250.000 en 170.000 jaar (MIS 7-vroeg MIS 6), d.w.z. voor de landijsbedekking van het Saalien. De artefacten uit deze periode hebben één of meer fasen van verspoeling ondergaan. Een aanzienlijk deel van de artefacten schrijven we toe aan het latere Midden-Paleolithicum met een ruime datering in de eerste helft of het middendeel van de laatste ijstijd (MIS 5d-3: ca. 115.000-40.000 jaar geleden). Een aantal laat-middenpaleolithische werktuigen vertoont affiniteit met specifieke fasen van het Moustérien Complex, zoals het Moustérien de tradition acheuléenne (MTA) en het Moustérien type Quina. Een klein aantal artefacten hoort mogelijk thuis in het vroege Jong-Paleolithicum (MIS 3 en 2); het Laat- Aurignacien en het Vroeg-Gravettien komen in aanmerking. Slechts één artefact hoort waarschijnlijk thuis in de laatpaleolithische Federmesser-traditie. Artefacten uit het Vroeg- en/of Midden-Mesolithicum zijn op de Zandmotor (afkomstig uit wingebied Q16F,H) niet uitgesproken aanwezig, wel iets verder zuidelijk langs het Noordzeestrand, richting Hoek van Holland. De meeste en tegelijk de jongste prehistorische artefacten schrijven we toe aan het Laat-Mesolithicum (Vroeg-Atlanticum), zo rond 6400/6300 v.Chr. Opvallend zijn enkele tientallen bijlen en afslagen die met de productie hiervan samenhangen. Samen met enkele trapezia vormen de bijlen een karakteristiek element van het Noord-Nederlandse Laat-Mesolithicum (voorheen samengevat onder de noemer ‘De Leien-Wartena Complex’).