Prehistoric Settlements and Development of the Regional Economic Area (Project 4)

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This project forms project no. 4 within the project-bundle SINCOS II. It aims to gather information, whether and to which extent the ancient human societies have reacted to the coastal decline caused by climate evolution and geological processes as well as to other changes of their natural environment by adaptation their economic system, their social structures or their communication networks. The geo-scientific investigations of the SINCOS-Research group from 2002 to 2005 had clearly proved different regional developments of the coastal changes east and west of the Darss sill. People living in both regions have been affected and threatened by this process in a different extent. The comparative analysis of their economic strategies and their cultural traditions offers an excellent opportunity to study and characterize human behaviour models in maritime shaped landscapes. The spatial emphasis is put on the Mecklenburgian Bight with a special focus on the Wismar Bight and on the coastal waters of Rügen Island as part of the Arkona basin and the Pommeranian Bight. The period between 6000 and 2000 cal BC (Late Mesolithic until Late Neolithic period) is of particular interest, because the rapid rise of the sea level during that period has caused great environmental changes, so that people continuously had to adapt to the changing ecological system. Several well preserved coastal sites have already been located and surveyed in both areas due to the underwater archaeological work of the SINCOS-Research group (2002-2005). In the frame of the here applied project field-work on a couple of well preserved and exceptionally scientific important sites and the detailed investigation of the finds shall be focused on. The evaluation of these sites will produce the necessary proxy data to reconstruct and to model the reaction of the socio-economic system to the changing geo-system and climate in this period. Moreover the localization and survey of Late Mesolithic and early Neolithic sites is necessary to clarify and to generalize the expected results. Appropriate detailed examinations of those sites are supposed to be done in the applied project for the purpose of our study. For the period between 2000 cal BC and 1900 AD as the sea, lakes and rivers more and anymore were used as a traffic and communication ways while it's importance for the extraction of food recourses in the same extent decreased, no additional fieldwork is planned. Several coastal sites of the bronze and iron age as well as sites of the early and Late Middle Ages are recorded in the Archaeological heritage archives of the Heritage State Agencies of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig- Holstein. All information on the modifications and changes of the coastline and the sea level based on the investigation of these sites will be available for this project and the modelling partner-projects.