Fish and resilience among Early Holocene foragers of southern Scandinavia: A fusion of stable isotopes and zooarchaeology through Bayesian mixing modelling

Boëthius, Adam; Ahlström, Torbjörn

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2018.02.018

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…No sieving was done on any of the former excavations and, given the difficulties in finding fishbones when not sieving with small mesh sizes [ 41 – 44 ], the lack of fish bones from the former excavations may indicate deficient recovery methods, as opposed to lack of fishing activities. This also fits best with the location of Ageröd I (on the shore of an ancient lake, Fig 1 ) and a perceived general fish dependency in Southern Scandinavia at the time [ 45 , 46 ]. To avoid speculation regarding the fishing activities at the site, this could be further investigated using more high resolute methods, e.g.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair

et al. 2020

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Ancient organic remains are essential for the reconstruction of past human lifeways and environments but are only preserved under particular conditions. Recent findings indicate that such conditions are becoming rarer and that archaeological sites with previously good preservation, are deteriorating. To investigate this, we returned to the well-known Swedish Mesolithic site Ageröd I. Here we present the result of the re-excavation and the osteological analyses of the bone remains from the 1940s, 1970s and 2019 excavation campaigns of the site, to document and quantify changes in bone preservation and relate them to variations in soil conditions and on-site topography. The results indicate that the bone material has suffered from accelerated deterioration during the last 75 years. This has led to heavily degraded remains in some areas and complete destruction in others. We conclude that while Ageröd can still be considered an important site, it has lost much of the properties that made it unique. If no actions are taken to secure its future preservation, the site will soon lose the organic remains that before modern encroachment and climate change had been preserved for 9000 years. Finally, because Ageröd has not been subjected to more or heavier encroachment than most other archaeological sites, our results also raise questions of the state of organic preservation in other areas and call for a broad examination of our most vulnerable hidden archaeological remains.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair

et al. 2020

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“…the Norwegian Stone Age (Breivik 2014;Bjerck et al 2016;Ritchie, Hufthammer & Bergsvik 2016;Jørgensen 2020;Mjaerum & Mansrud 2020). Furthermore, a transition to a more diverse marine economy centred around fishing has been argued to have major implications for the mobility patterns and settlement strategies of coastal hunter-gatherers, where such a shift could indicate a decrease in mobility (see above and Boethius 2017;Boethius & Ahlström 2018). The location of MM and LM sites with respect to variation in shoreline emergence, as identified in this study, could therefore be consistent with economic diversification and a decrease in mobility.…”

Section: Settlement Patterns Of Mesolithic Hunter-fishergathererssupporting

confidence: 67%

Algorithmic Classification and Statistical Modelling of Coastal Settlement Patterns in Mesolithic South-Eastern Norway

Roalkvam

2020

Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology

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“…Considering how much of modern archaeology is based on molecular level analyses, e.g. isotope analyses, aDNA and protein analyses [76][77][78][79][80][81][82], or, indeed, radiocarbon dating of bone remains; and the rapid development of new scientific methods to further expand these fields, these results are not promising for the future (see Fig 14C).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying archaeo-organic degradation – A multiproxy approach to understand the accelerated deterioration of the ancient organic cultural heritage at the Swedish Mesolithic site Ageröd

Boëthius¹,

Hollund²,

Linderholm³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Despite a growing body of evidence concerning accelerated organic degradation at archaeological sites, there have been few follow-up investigations to examine the status of the remaining archaeological materials in the ground. To address the question of archaeoorganic preservation, we revisited the Swedish, Mesolithic key-site Agerö d and could show that the bone material had been subjected to an accelerated deterioration during the last 75 years, which had destroyed the bones in the areas where they had previously been best preserved. To understand why this has happened and to quantify and qualify the extent of the organic degradation, we here analyse the soil chemistry, bone histology, collagen preservation and palaeobotany at the site. Our results show that the soil at Agerö d is losing, or has already lost, its preservative and buffering qualities, and that pH-values in the still wet areas of the site have dropped to levels where no bone preservation is possible. Our results suggest that this acidification process is enhanced by the release of sulphuric acid as pyrite in the bones oxidizes. While we are still able to find well-preserved palaeobotanical remains, they are also starting to corrode through reintroduced oxygen into the archaeological layers. While some areas of the site have been more protected through redeposited soil on top of the archaeological layers, all areas of Agerö d are rapidly deteriorating. Lastly, while it is still possible to perform molecular analyses on the best-preserved bones from the most protected areas, this opportunity will likely be lost within a few decades. In conclusion, we find that if we, as a society, wish to keep this valuable climatic, environmental and cultural archive, both at Agerö d and elsewhere, the time to act is now and if we wait we will soon be in a situation where this record will be irretrievably lost forever.

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Fish and resilience among Early Holocene foragers of southern Scandinavia: A fusion of stable isotopes and zooarchaeology through Bayesian mixing modelling

Cited by 33 publications

References 84 publications

Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair

Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair

Algorithmic Classification and Statistical Modelling of Coastal Settlement Patterns in Mesolithic South-Eastern Norway

Quantifying archaeo-organic degradation – A multiproxy approach to understand the accelerated deterioration of the ancient organic cultural heritage at the Swedish Mesolithic site Ageröd

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