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Eight New Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene AMS Dates from the Southeastern Baltic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2019

Bente Philippsen Open the ORCID record for Bente Philippsen [Opens in a new window] ,
Livija Ivanovaitė ,
Kirill Makhotka ,
Florian Sauer ,
Felix Riede  and
Jesper Olsen
Bente Philippsen*
Affiliation:
Aarhus AMS Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet), Aarhus University, Moesgaard Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark
Livija Ivanovaitė
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark
Kirill Makhotka
Affiliation:
The Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Art, Klinicheskaya Str. 21, Kaliningrad 236016, Russia
Florian Sauer
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark
Felix Riede
Affiliation:
Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, Moesgård Allé 20, 8270 Højbjerg, Denmark
Jesper Olsen
Affiliation:
Aarhus AMS Centre, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, Ny Munkegade 120, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: bphilipp@phys.au.dk.
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Abstract

Only a limited number of radiometric dates for the Final Palaeolithic and the first half of the Mesolithic are available from the southeastern Baltic. This paper presents eight new Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene radiocarbon accelerator mass spectrometry (14C AMS) ages of osseous artifacts housed at the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Art. These artifacts include one piece of worked reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) antler, three axes of the so-called Lyngby type, one bone point, one uniserial harpoon, one so-called bâton percé antler shaft, and one slotted bone. All the samples were successfully dated and yielded five Late Pleistocene and three Early Holocene ages, including the hitherto earliest age for human occupation in the Eastern Baltic. The dates include not only a surprisingly early date for a bone point (for this region), but also some dates that contradict expected ages based on traditional typological assessment. Our study significantly adds to the still small number of existing absolutely dated artifacts from the region and proposes new ways of viewing the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic chronology in the southeastern Baltic.

Keywords

Antler axesbarbed pointsEarly MesolithicFinal Palaeolithicreindeer
Type
Research Article
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 2019 , pp. 615 - 627
Copyright
© 2019 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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