To investigate changes in culinary practices associated with the arrival of farming, we analysed the organic residues of over 1,000 pottery vessels from hunter-gatherer-fisher and early agricultural sites across Northern Europe from the Lower Rhine Basin to the Northeastern Baltic. Here, pottery was widely used by hunter-gatherer-fishers prior to the introduction of domesticated animals and plants. Overall, there was surprising continuity in the way that hunter-gatherer-fishers and farmers used pottery. Both aquatic products and wild plants remained prevalent, a pattern repeated consistently across the study area. We argue that the rapid adaptation of farming communities to exploit coastal and lagoonal resources facilitated their northerly expansion, and in some cases, hunting, gathering, and fishing became the most dominant subsistence strategy. Nevertheless, dairy products frequently appear in pottery associated with the earliest farming groups often mixed with wild plants and fish. Interestingly, we also find compelling evidence of dairy products in hunter-gatherer-fisher Ertebølle pottery, which predates the arrival of domesticated animals. We propose that Ertebølle hunter-gatherer-fishers frequently acquired dairy products through exchange with adjacent farming communities prior to the transition. The continuity observed in pottery use across the transition to farming contrasts with the analysis of human remains which shows substantial demographic change through ancient DNA and, in some cases, a reduction in marine consumption through stable isotope analysis. We postulate that farmers acquired the knowledge and skills they needed to succeed from local hunter-gatherer-fishers but without substantial admixture.

The ancient lake Duvensee in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, is one of the prime locations in northern Europe for early Holocene research. Archaeological sites on the former lakeshore provide vivid illustrations of early Mesolithic life, with bark mats and other organic finds preserved, including evidence for the extensive use of hazelnuts. Although the area has been the subject of research for almost 100 years, a coherent summary of these discoveries has not yet been written. Here we review past research at Duvensee, and give some prospects for further research. We show that the Duvensee sites varied in their structure and chronology. While only a limited number of sites can be connected to hazelnut exploitation, some of them show signs of hafting and retooling and other domestic activities. At a few sites, specific hearths were excavated which can be connected with hazelnut roasting and other subsistence activities. Finally, we show that while most earlier studies focused almost exclusively on archaeological research questions, Duvensee has the potential to reveal not only transformations in human behaviour, but also environmental changes at a detailed scale; we therefore argue for a more holistic perspective and multidisciplinary approach to reconstructing prehistoric landscapes and cultural transformations.

Like any other living being, humans constantly influence their environment, be it intentionally or unintentionally. By extracting natural resources, they shape their environment and also that of plants and other animals. A great difference setting people apart from all other living beings is the ability to construct and develop their own niche intentionally, and the unique tool for this is cultural behaviour. Here, we discuss anthropogenic environmental changes of hunter-gatherers and present new palaeoecological and palynological data. The studies are framed with ethnoarchaeological data from Western Siberia to gain a better understanding of how different triggers lead to coping mechanisms. For archaeological implication, we use two Mesolithic case studies from Germany: One of them focuses on hazelnut economy around ancient Lake Duvensee, and the other broaches the issue of selective roe deer hunt and its consequences at the site of Friesack. We address the archaeological evidence from the perspective of active alteration and its consequences, starting our argumentation from a perspective of niche construction theory. This approach has rarely been applied to early Holocene hunter-gatherers in Northern Europe even though the available data render possible to discuss human–environment interaction from such a perspective. It is demonstrated that archaeological research has tools at hand that enables to detect anthropogenic niche construction. However, the ethnoarchaeological example shows limitations and archaeologically invisible triggers and consequent results of human adaptations. The critical revision of such perspectives based on empirical data provides a better understanding of social and environmental transformations in the early- and mid-Holocene.

We present a case study of a bog showing how an integrated approach of multi-method geophysical sounding and local soil sampling can be used to identify, differentiate, and map organic sediments. Our study is based on ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and shear-wave seismic (SH seismic) profiling applied to sediments of the former Lake Duvensee (northern Germany), nowadays a bog. This is a well-known locality for remains from the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers’ occupation that has been attracting archaeological and geoarchaeological research for100 years. The bog is embedded in low conductive glacial sand and is characterized by layers of different gyttja sediments (detritus and calcareous). The present study was conducted in order to identify the bog morphology and the thickness of the peat body and lake sediments, in order to understand the basin evolution. To validate the geophysical results, derived from surface measurements, drilling, soil analyses as well as borehole guided wave analysis of electromagnetic waves and Direct-Push (DP-EC) have been carried out and used for comparison. It turned out that each method can distinguish between sediments that differ in grain size, particularly between peat, lake sediments (gyttjas and mud) and basal glacial sand deposits. GPR is even able to separate between strongly and weakly decomposed peat layers, which is also clear considering resistivity variations in the ERT computation. From the association between geophysical properties and sediment analysis (e.g., water content and organic matter) different gyttjas were distinguished (coarse and fine) and seismic velocity was correlated to bulk density. Moreover, GPR and SH-wave seismics present different resolutions, confirming that the latter allows measurements, which are more focused on determining the extension of basal sand deposits, the depth of which is difficult to reach with GPR. Representative values of electrical resistivity, dielectric permittivity, and shear wave velocity have been determined for each sediment type and are therefore available to complete the investigation of wetland environments. Fine grained lake sediments were difficult to differentiate by the applied methods. This could be a result of high ionic concentration within the permanent groundwater body, partly masking the sediment properties.

We investigate the landscape development of the early Mesolithic hunter-gatherer sites of Duvensee (10000–6500 cal. BCE). Based on ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and geoarchaeological drillings, we present for the first time a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of the palaeoenvironment of 63 ha covering subarea of the former lake during the Mesolithic. The archaeological aims were (1) to detect the location of former islands possibly hosting hunter-gatherer settlements and (2) to reconstruct the ancient landscape development for understanding prehistoric land use. The research in Duvensee lasts almost 100 years, providing vivid illustrations of early Mesolithic life. Clusters of Mesolithic camps have been found located on small sand hills that formed islands in the prehistoric lake. For this environment, we present depth maps of the three most important sedimentary facies interfaces of the ancient Lake Duvensee. Interface1 represents the transition between coarse organic sediments (peat and coarse detritus gyttja) and fine-grained organic sediments (fine detritus gyttja, calcareous gyttja), Interface2 represents the transition to the underlying clayish-loamy sediments, and Interface3 marks the top of the basal sand deposits at the lake bottom. From Interface3, we identified the location and extent of five former islands with Mesolithic camps. Stratigraphic information from the corings enabled us to create a 3D model of the spatio-temporal development of the Duvensee bog. The locations of the islands and their estimated dive-up times agree with the spatio-temporal pattern of the previous archaeological finds. The model shows where hunter-gatherers could settle and move from one island to another following the shorelines of the overgrowing lake. The 3D stratigraphic model provides growth and shrinking rates of the island and lake areas in the Mesolithic, and volumes of organic and non-organic deposited lake sediments. Besides, it provides a basis for a sustainable groundwater management needed for heritage preservation.