Archaeologia Baltica

The earliest settlement of Latvia occurred at the very end of the Late Glacial, after the retreat of the ice sheet. Important evidence of this earliest occupation is the well-known site Salaspils Laukskola. Previous research has focused on the typological aspects of this assemblage, and the use of lithic raw materials, suggesting an affiliation to the Swidry tradition. However, a wider technological perspective on this assemblage comprising a rich lithic inventory has recently proven fruitful. We present a detailed new technological analysis of the Laukskola assemblage, as well as five small lithic assemblages from Latvia based on a chaîne opératoire approach. While supporting the Swidry connection, this allows for a renewed discussion of the Final Palaeolithic settlement of Latvia, and its relationship with adjacent areas of northeast Europe.

The process of the recolonisation of northern Europe after deglaciation is related to groups of hunter-gatherer societies called

Extensive excavations of Stone Age sites in Western Pomerania have been conducted since 1981. Three of them, the Rotnowo site 18, Tanowo site 3 and Bolków site 1, were selected as Tanged Point Younger Dryas key sites. These open sandy sites revealed well-preserved flint concentrations and a dwelling structure (Tanowo). Their flint inventories, with elements of Ahrensburgian culture, are made up of local flints. Younger Dryas chronology is supported by geology and C14 from Rotnowo: 10820±80 BP [Poz-8309] (cal. 11180–10830 BC). The results of the investigations were compared with settlements from other regions of Poland and with sites from Lithuania and Latvia.

The site of Rostislavl is located on the right high bank of the Oka river near the town of Ozyory (Moscow region). Tanged points from the Rostislavl site are similar to the ones spread in the Alleröd-Dryas III period on the sites of northern Germany, Poland, the Upper Volga (Podol III and Ust-Tudovka I), and in the Upper Dnieper (Anosovo I) regions etc. This fact allows us to assume, at this stage of research, the Final Palaeolithic age of the Rostislavl site as the most probable.

The Swiders of Ukrainian Polissya used mainly local raw materials. The final preparation of pre-core for usage was forming the platform and the working surface. The main Swiderian type of core of Ukrainian Polissya is double opposite platform cores with one working surface. A typical form of Swiderian pressure cores of Ukrainian Polissya is cone-shaped and pencil-shaped. Microblades were made to be inserts into arrowheads of organic material. The joining of organic and stone elements for producing narrow-slot points is not traditional for Swiderian technology in Ukrainian Polissya. The technology, which fuses organic materials with stone elements for producing narrow-slot points, is typical of Steppe cultures. This tradition is from Kukrek Culture.