Swiderian culture
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↑ before Homo (Pliocene) |
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Swiderian culture, also published in English literature as Sviderian and Swederian, is the name of Final Palaeolithic cultural complexes in Poland and the surrounding areas. The type-site is Swidry Wielkie, near Warsaw. The Swiderian is recognized as a distinctive culture that developed on the sand dunes left behind by the retreating glaciers. Rimantiene (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]
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[edit] 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, White Russia, Central 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 to the northeast following the retreating tundra. 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 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 interpretated thus that the new arriving people were not acquainted yet with the best local sources of flint, proving their external origin.[3]
[edit] Impact
The Ukrainian archaeologist L. Zalizniak (1989, p.83-84) believes Kunda culture of Central Russia and the Baltic zone, and other so-called post-Swiderian cultures, derive from the Swiderian culture. Sorokin (2004) rejects the "contact" hypothesis of the formation of Kunda culture and holds it originated from the seasonal migrations of Swiderian people at the turn of Pleistocene and Holocene when human subsistence was based on hunting reindeer.[4] While not related to the Finnish archeological cultures of Komsa and Askola, the latter being commonly related to the origin of the Suomusjärvi culture (6500-4200 BC) and the subsequent Combed Ware culture,[5] the post-Swiderian finds from the Sujala site in Utsjoki in the province of Lapland, Finland, are considered alien to local archeology, although the raw materials of the lithic assemblage originate from the coast of Varanger in northern Norway. Concerning this region, the commonly held view today is that the earliest settlement of the North Norwegian coast originated on the western and southwestern coast of Norway and ultimately in the final Palaeolithic Ahrensburg culture of northwestern Europe. The combination of a coastal raw material and a lithic technique typical to Late Palaeolithic and very early Mesolithic industries of northern Europe, suggests contemporaneity to Phase 1 of the Norwegian Finnmark Mesolithic (Komsa proper), dating to between 9 000 and 10 000 BP. Close parallels of the blade technology among the earliest Mesolithic finds in southern Norway would place the find closer or even before 10 000 BP. However, a preliminar connection to early North Norwegian settlements is contradicted by the shape of the tanged point from Sujala on the shores of Lake Vetsijärvi. These lithic markers present a bifacially shaped tang and ventral retouch on the tip that are rare or absent in Ahrensburgian contexts, but very characteristic of the so-called Post-Swiderian cultures of northwestern Russia. There, counterparts of the Sujala cores can also be found. Such an Early Mesolithic influence from the Baltic might also imply an - albeit unconfirmed - adjustment to previous thoughts on the colonization of the Barents Sea coast.[6]
[edit] Genetics
Genetic investigations suggest the advent of Swederian culture may be associated, like Ahrensburg culture, with the spread of Y-DNA Haplogroup R1b, also called Hg P*(xR1a), to the population, and stress genetic similarity with Germany.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ BROMMIAN (LYNGBY) FINDS IN LITHUANIA - Egidijus Šatavičius, The Lithuanian Institute of History, 2006. [1]
- ^ 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.) [2]
- ^ On the Genesis of Kunda Culture. A. Sorokin’s Hypothesis. Comments - Tomas Ostrauskas [3]
- ^ The Population a Prehistory of Finland - Ville Luho, in: Ancient Cultures of the Uralian Peoples, Corvina Press - Edited by Péter Hajdü, 1976, ISBN 963 13 2019 2
- ^ 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 [4]
- ^ Dupuy, B. et al. 2006. Geographical heterogeneity of Y-chromosomal lineages in Norway. Forensic Science International. 164: 10-19. [5]
