Dating Late Paleolithic Harpoons from Lake Lubāns, Latvia

Abstract

Over 3000 prehistoric bone and antler artifacts, collected in the late 1930s from the former lakebed of Lake Lubāns, are held by the National History Museum of Latvia. This collection is remarkable not only as one of the largest known assemblages of bone implements in northern Europe, but also in terms of diversity of forms. The most elaborately worked objects include harpoons, often with two rows of barbs and spade-shaped bases, which are believed to date to the Late Paleolithic, and to be among the oldest organic artifacts ever found in Latvia. Four broken specimens were sampled in 2011 for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating, stable isotope analysis, and taxonomic attribution by ZooMS. The results support the interpretation that these artifacts were made from large cervid bones, and date all four objects to the early Preboreal (mid-10th millennium cal BC). The Lake Lubāns harpoons therefore fall in the same period as similar harpoons from Denmark, northern Germany, and Poland, although only a handful of these have been dated directly.

How Bone Technology points to Cultural Lineages in Prehistory? New Insights from Danish Late- and PostGlacial Weapons’ Heads

“…Therefore, it was classically assumed that harpoons would be Late Glacial and leister-prongs, Mesolithic. This being said, recent AMS radiocarbon dates of several of these harpoons from eastern Baltic retrieved as stray finds now indicate that this category of weapons can be of Mesolithic age in date [29]. This is in line with the new results obtained here from Danish material with contemporary ages c. 9,000 calBC i.e.…”

An attempt to link a lithic complex with the Late Palaeolithic Rangifer tarandus antler axe from the Parupė site in northern Lithuania

“…Late Pleistocene osseous finds are particularly rare in the east Baltic region. However, recent years of consistent AMS 14 C dating of prehistoric bone and antler artefacts have shown that such artefacts do exist (Meadows et al 2014;Rimkus et al 2019), and their dating has proven that they can greatly contribute to the chronology, periodisation and technological issues of the east Baltic Late and Final Palaeolithic. The dated cases have also revealed that one of the most prevailing Late Palaeolithic osseous artefacts in the region in question is reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) antler axes, also known as the enigmatic Lyngby axes (Müller 1897).…”

Arheoloģija un etnogrāfija : Arheologam Ādolfam Stubavam veltītās starptautiskās konferences (Rīga, 27.-29.09.2013.) "No apmetnēm līdz mūra pilīm: dzīvesvietas cauri laikmetiem. Arheologam Ādolfam Stubavam - 100" materiāli

“…Arī Lubāna ezerā nav atrasti pierādījumi par roņu eksistenci ne pašreiz, ne arī agrākos periodos. Liekas, ka harpūnas līdztekus roņu medībām tikpat labi varēja tikt izmantotas lielāku sauszemes dzīvnieki medībās (Andersen, Petersen 2009, 41) Kiel University, Germany (Meadows et al 2014). The theory that the first peopling of Latvia took place during the Younger Dryas and Early Preboreal, based on the typology of the flint inventory, has now obtained crucial supporting evidence.…”