Swiderian culture
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Komornica culture |
The Paleolithic |
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↑ Pliocene (before Homo) |
↓ Mesolithic |
The Swiderian culture is an Upper Palaeolithic/Mesolithic cultural complex, centred on the area of modern Poland. The type-site is Świdry Wielkie, in Otwock near the Swider River, a tributary to the Vistula River, in Masovia. The Swiderian is recognized as a distinctive culture that developed on the sand dunes left behind by the retreating glaciers. Rimantienė (1996) considered the relationship between Swiderian and Solutrean "outstanding, though also indirect", in contrast with the Bromme-Ahrensburg complex (Lyngby culture), for which she introduced the term "Baltic Magdalenian" for generalizing all other North European Late Paleolithic culture groups that have a common origin in Aurignacian.[1]
Development
Three periods can be distinguished. The crude flint blades of Early Swiderian are found in the area of Nowy Mlyn in the Holy Cross Mountains region. The Developed Swiderian appeared with their migrations to the north and is characterized by tanged blades: this stage separates the northwestern European cultural province, embracing Belgium, Holland, northwest Germany, Denmark and Norway, and the Middle East European cultural province, embracing Silesia, Brandenburgia, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Western Russia, Ukraine and the Crimea. Late Swiderian is characterized by blades with a blunted back.[2]
The Swiderian culture plays a central role in the Palaeolithic-Mesolithic transition. It has been generally accepted that most of the Swiderian population emigrated at the very end of the Pleistocene (10,000 BP uncalibrated; 9500 BC calibrated) to the northeast following the retreating tundra, after the Younger Dryas[citation needed]. Recent radiocarbon dates prove that some groups of the Svidero-Ahrensburgian Complex persisted into the Preboreal. Unlike western Europe, the Mesolithic groups now inhabiting the Polish Plain were newcomers. This has been attested by a 300-year-long gap between the youngest Palaeolithic and the oldest Mesolithic occupation. The oldest Mesolithic site is Chwalim, located in western Silesia, Poland; it outdates the Mesolithic sites situated to the east in central and northeastern Poland by about 150 years. Thus, the Mesolithic population progressed from the west after a 300-year-long settlement break, and moved gradually towards the east. The lack of good flint raw materials in the Polish early Mesolithic has been interpreted thus that the new arriving people were not acquainted yet with the best local sources of flint, proving their external origin.[3]
Impact
The Ukrainian archaeologist
References
- ^ BROMMIAN (LYNGBY) FINDS IN LITHUANIA - Egidijus Šatavičius, The Lithuanian Institute of History, 2006. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-04-16. Retrieved 2007-12-02.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ The Magdalenian Culture in Poland - Benet-Tygel, Sula. Published in: American Anthropologist 1944. Vol. 46:479-499.
- ^ Kobusiewicz, Michael - The problem of the Palaeolithic-Mesolithic transition on the Polish Plain: the state of research (133-139). Hunters in a changing world. Environment and Archaeology of the Pleistocene - Holocene Transition (ca. 11000 - 9000 B.C.) in Northern Central Europe. Workshop of the U.I.S.P.P.-Commission XXXII at Greifswald in September 2002 - Thomas Terberger and Berit Valentin Eriksen (Eds.) [1]
- ^ On the Genesis of Kunda Culture. A. Sorokin’s Hypothesis. Comments - Tomas Ostrauskas [2]
- ISBN 951-849-573-4
- ^ T. Jussila: excavation report at http://www.mikroliitti.fi/kuurmanp/saarenoja/saarenoja.htm Archived 2011-07-20 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Survey and excavation at Lake Vetsijärvi, Lapland - Tuija Rankama & Jarmo Kankaanpää, in: PEOPLE, MATERIAL CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT IN THE NORTH, Proceedings of the 22nd Nordic Archaeological Conference, University of Oulu, 18–23 August 2004, Edited by Vesa-Pekka Herva [3]
- ISBN 5-89606-291-5