Hamburg culture
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The Hamburg culture (12400 BC-12100 BC, C14-years) was a late Upper Paleolithic culture of reindeer hunters during the last part of the Weichsel Glaciation.
It has been identified through analyses of the settlement at Meiendorf north of Hamburg, Germany. It is characterized by tångespets and zinken tools, which were used as chisels when working with horns.
The culture was spread from northern France, to southern Scandinavia in the north and to Poland in the east.
In the early 1980s, the first find from the culture in Scandinavia was excavated at Jels in Sønderjylland. Recently, new finds have been discovered at e.g. Finja in northern Skåne. Latest finds(2005) have it that these people in summer travelled far north along the Norwegian coast - dryshod since the sea level was 50 m lower than today.
In northern Germany, camps with layers of detritus have been found. In the layers, there is a great deal of horn and bone, and it appears that the reindeer was an important prey.
The distribution of the finds in the settlements show that the settlements were small and only inhabited by a small group of people. At a few settlements, archaeologists have discovered circles of stone, which were weights for a teepee covering.
