Nere på botten, där är det toppen! En komparativ studie av landskapsbruk hos mesolitiska jägar- samlargrupper i Doggerland och Danmark

Abstract

In recent years, a fascination with underwater research regarding prehistory has captured the imagination of countless people. Due to climate change and its effects on human societies and ecosystems around the world, we look back to earlier climactic periods that affected both humans and ecosystems in prehistoric times. This paper focuses on hunter-gatherer societies in Mesolithic Doggerland and Denmark, where climate change during the early Holocene came to transform the landscape that these groups relied on. The aim of the study is to see if these groups showed any traces of resilience and adaptation to these climatic changes and if new strategies in collecting nourishment and raw material emerged. The study uses resilience theory to gauge the extent of resilience and adaptability among these hunter-gatherer groups. The results showed that the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in the research areas lived in an ecologically diverse environment. Little innovation was made in tools, and the choice of raw material stayed the same for a long period of time. This was described as a period of stability by the author where the diversity and amount of biomass was large, and conclusively the hunter-gatherer groups resilience was high when faced with these climactic changes.