
Anders FischerSealand Archaeology · Research and consultancy
Anders Fischer
PhD
About
101
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Introduction
The neolithisation of Europe, aDNA, stable isotopes, paleo diet, spread of diseases.
Wetland archaeology.
Underwater archaeology.
Cultural heritage management.
Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Early Neolithic.
Publications
Publications (101)
In the period between 5,300 and 4,900 calibrated years before present (cal. bp), populations across large parts of Europe underwent a period of demographic decline1,2. However, the cause of this so-called Neolithic decline is still debated. Some argue for an agricultural crisis resulting in the decline³, others for the spread of an early form of pl...
In the shallow coastal waters of the Danish archipelago, eelgrass (Zostera marina) forms extensive and extremely productive stands, which support food webs that are isotopically distinct from those based on the primary productivity of marine phytoplankton. The isotopic signatures of eelgrass and phytoplankton food webs explain much of the variation...
Today, Germanic languages, including German, English, Frisian, Dutch and the Nordic languages, are widely spoken in northwest Europe. However, key aspects of the assumed arrival and diversification of this linguistic group remain contentious 1—3 . By adding 712 new ancient human genomes we find an archaeologically elusive population entering Sweden...
The lethally maltreated body of Vittrup Man was deposited in a Danish bog, probably as part of a ritualised sacrifice. It happened between c. 3300 and 3100 cal years BC, i.e., during the period of the local farming-based Funnel Beaker Culture. In terms of skull morphological features, he differs from the majority of the contemporaneous farmers foun...
The lethally maltreated body of Vittrup Man was deposited in a Danish bog, probably as part of a ritualised sacrifice. It happened between c. 3300 and 3100 cal years BC, i.e., during the period of the local farming-based Funnel Beaker Culture. In terms of skull morphological features, he differs from the majority of the contemporaneous farmers foun...
The Holocene (beginning around 12,000 years ago) encompassed some of the most significant changes in human evolution, with far-reaching consequences for the dietary, physical and mental health of present-day populations. Using a dataset of more than 1,600 imputed ancient genomes¹, we modelled the selection landscape during the transition from hunti...
Major migration events in Holocene Eurasia have been characterized genetically at broad regional scales1–4. However, insights into the population dynamics in the contact zones are hampered by a lack of ancient genomic data sampled at high spatiotemporal resolution5–7. Here, to address this, we analysed shotgun-sequenced genomes from 100 skeletons s...
Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene1–5. Here, to investigate the cross-continental effects of these migrations, we shotgun-sequenced 317 genomes—mainly from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods—from across northern and western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genot...
The thousands of dolmens and long barrows spread across the Danish landscape are the earliest long-lasting expressions of architectural monumentality in Scandinavia. A series of new AMS dates on human skeletal material from several of them leads to a clarification of the generations-long debate on the relative chronology and typological evolution o...
List of 14C dates for Danish megaliths, Appendix 2 to Sjögren & Fischer 2023
The Eurasian Holocene (beginning c. 12 thousand years ago) encompassed some of the most significant changes in human evolution, with far-reaching consequences for the dietary, physical and mental health of present-day populations. Using an imputed dataset of >1600 complete ancient genome sequences, and new computational methods for locating selecti...
Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene. To investigate the cross-continental impacts we shotgun-sequenced 317 primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic genomes from across Northern and Western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genotypes from >1,600 ancient humans. Our analyse...
The Rødhals kitchen midden was located on a tiny stretch of land 18 km from the nearest major landmass in present-day Denmark. It dates to the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, roughly 4300 to 3700 cal BC. Its inhabitants practiced a remarkably broad-scale exploitation of marine resources spanning from the collecting of mollusks on the seashore , ov...
The Nekselø Wickerwork provides an unusually solid estimate on the marine reservoir age in the Holocene. The basis for this result is a 5200-year-old fish weir, built of hazel wood with a brief biological age of its own. Oysters settled on this construction. They had lived only for a short number of years when the fence capsized and was covered in...
Ceramic containers, intentionally deposited into wetlands, offer detailed insights into Early Neolithic culinary practices. Additionally, they are key for ascertaining the Neolithisation process in Denmark since they appear to form a typo-chronological sequence. Here, we use a combination of organic residue analysis (ORA) of pottery alongside Bayes...
The Gjerrild burial provides the largest and best-preserved assemblage of human skeletal material presently known from the Single Grave Culture (SGC) in Denmark. For generations it has been debated among archaeologists if the appearance of this archaeological complex represents a continuation of the previous Neolithic communities, or was facilitate...
The extensive peat bogs of Southern Scandinavia have yielded rich Mesolithic archaeological assemblages, with one of the most iconic artefacts being the bone point. Although great in number they remain understudied. Here we present a combined investigation of the typology, protein-based species composition, and absolute chronology of Maglemosian bo...
The wealth and variety of knowledge on the Mesolithic and Neolithic ages in present-day Denmark is to large extent due to the excellent preservation qualities for archaeological remains in the alkaline bogs of this country. The Aamose mire (Åmose in Danish) stands out as by far the largest and the richest area in Denmark, when it comes to Mesolithi...
Off the island of Nekselø, Denmark remains of >200 m long Neolithic fish weirs are exposed by erosion. These wooden structures have lain well-preserved beneath marine sediments for 5000 years. They demonstrate that the riches of the aquatic environment were by no means forgotten when people became farmers. Wood anatomical studies of the weirs show...
Microwear analysis of lithic debris offers an aid to field archaeologists in need of focusing excavation activity at the parts of Stone Age sites that are least disturbed by post-depositional processes. In this progress report we describe the ridge-wear approach and report on its application to the submerged Mesolithic settlement of Orehoved, Denma...
The Holmegaard mire in East Denmark has a rich archaeological record from the Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. It includes several settlement sites, the excavation of which have produced rich assemblages of bone and artefacts in wood, antler, etc. In the 1970s intensive field reconnaissance was undertaken of the area, focusing on lithic assemblage...
Why are present-day humans so attracted to the shores of the sea? A survey of the pre-Neolithic archaeological record of Europe indicates that causes may be traced far back in early prehistory. Examples from Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Scandinavia demonstrate the importance of the border zone between land and sea for human habitation and food...
A 50 cm long axe-like flint artifact is described and its date and the reason of its deposition in Lake Tissø is discussed
For millennia water and wetlands of the Tissø - Aamose valley served as communication lines. In the Mesolithic they were a traffic corridor between coast and inland. During the subsequent five millennia they were the places where local inhabitants seeked contact with spiritual powers. This landscape is rich in well preserved Mesolithic settlements...
Waterlogged sediments, so important to archaeology, are vanishing all over Scandinavia. Therefore management programmes for lasting preservation of archaeological values in wetlands are urgently needed here, as in many other parts of Europe. In the pursuit of this it is recommended to invest energy in the organizing of a programme for the definitio...
Marine archaeologists surveyed 1 km2 of sea bed off Køge Harbour, Denmark, using commercial off-shore equipment. It resulted in a rich settlement assemblage of worked flints from the Mesolithic Maglemose period and the location of a ca. 8300 years old fish weir made of hazel rods. The finds concentrated along the edges of an estuary from a period w...
During surveying for submerged coastal settlements in the Danish Storebaelt, the remains of a drowned forest were found at a depth of 8-9 m in Musholm Bay. Between the tree stumps were traces of a Mesolithic settlement. This lead to a closer archaeological investigation by a crew of recreational divers and professional underwater archaeologists. Th...
Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic traces of practical activities involving daily household tasks, crafts, transport, fishing and hunting are prolifically represented in archaeological remains from the seabed. But spiritual aspects of human behaviour have also left behind abundant and diverse testimony: Wall art and depositions of human skeleto...
The Wickerwork, the largest wood-built fish trap complex known from the
European Stone Age, lies on the seabed off the island of Nekselø, Denmark.
As a result of environmental changes, rapidly progressing erosion is exposing
pieces of wood in their thousands within a 50-metre-wide swath that extends
200 metres out from the coast to a depth of c. 2....
There are numerous records from inland sites in Europe and the Levant of early prehistoric ornaments and hunting weapons made from shells and bones of marine animals. Some have been found as much as 2000 km from the present-day coast. Many cluster along navigable rivers, perhaps implying a capacity for water travel at that time. These inland finds i...
Oceans of Archaeology bids welcome to a vast submerged prehistoric world that, as yet, is unfamiliar to most people. The submerged cultural heritage of the European and eastern Mediterranean countries presented in the volume is of a richness and diversity so far unmatched anywhere else on the globe. It results from the systematic and far-sighted ef...
Vast coastal plains that vanished below the waves thousands of years ago were highways to new territories and a cornucopia of natural riches for early humankind. 'Oceans of Archaeology' presents these virtually unexplored parts of the archaeological world map. It scrutinises the submerged early prehistory of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, an...
Even the best preserved log boats from the European Stone Age can be difficult to recognize to the untrained eye. They were often abandoned in shallow water where they gradually fragmented longitudinally, if they did not disintegrate into small pieces, and were spread by waves and currents until they finally became covered and preserved by layers o...
Sea travel was fundamental to early prehistoric population dispersal, economy and social interaction. Small-scale water transport is attested to by numerous European finds of log boats dating back as much as 9000 years. However, traces of human presence on islands provide much earlier evidence of sea crossings. While the validity of stone tools clai...
A cave rich in ice age wall art disappeared below the waves around the close of the ice age. The paintings and engravings in figurative and geometric styles prompt associations with the interior of spectacularly furnished churches. Among the motives depicted are human hands, male and female genitalia, horses, ibex and great auks
Co-operation between aggregate extractors and heritage authorities resulted in the location and in situ preservation of c. 9000 years-old settlements on the Danish seabed. Habitation traces of flint and bone were located in places that would have been situated next to the entrance to a small inlet, when sea level was c. 10 m lower than today.
The Koelbjerg individual, dated c. 8500 cal BC, represents the earliest human skeletal remains described from Scandinavia. Based on ancient DNA, strontium isotope and statistical anthropological analyses the individual’s sex, haplogroup and geographical provenance are here analysed and discussed. In contrast to previous claims, our genetic and anth...
Microwear analysis is applied to reconstruct the function and social organisation at the Late Glacial site of Trollesgave, Denmark. As with Bromme Culture sites in general, the lithic assemblage consists of primarily three types of tools. There is a strong association between these types and their use: end scrapers for dry hide scraping; burins for...
The Bromme culture belongs to the Lateglacial, the period when people settled in the recently deglaciated Southern Scandinavia. Until now there have been only a few imprecise fix-points relating to the chronological position of this archaeological culture. This situation can now be improved with the aid of research results from a Bromme culture set...
Here we present evidence of phytoliths preserved in carbonised food deposits on prehistoric pottery from the western Baltic dating from 6,100 cal BP to 5750 cal BP. Based on comparisons to over 120 European and Asian species, our observations are consistent with phytolith morphologies observed in modern garlic mustard seed (Alliaria petiolata (M. B...
There is a significant difference (t = 1.99 p = <0.001) in phytolith counts between interior carbonised (n = 61) and exterior soot (n = 13) supporting the claim that vessels with high counts were from the deliberate preparation of plants within the ceramics. The graph shows those samples with high silica body counts (>33 mg−1, green columns) that q...
Traces of Late Palaeolithic activity in the North European landscape are nearly invisible to modern field archaeology. The result is widespread loss of information about the presumably numerous activity sites from this period which each year are either damaged or destroyed by agriculture and development. This article addresses the root causes of th...
Shallow oval bowls used on the Baltic coast in the Mesolithic have been suggested as oil lamps, burning animal fat. Here researchers confirm the use of four coastal examples as lamps burning blubber—the fat of marine animals, while an inland example burned fat from terrestrial mammals or freshwater aquatics—perhaps eels. The authors use a combinati...
Freshwater deposits exposed in a coastal cliff at Nørre Lyngby, NW Denmark, have yielded some of the
northernmost traces of human presence in Western Europe during the Late Glacial. A rib from a reindeer bearing a cut mark has been dated to the climatically mild Allerød period. A robust projectile point of flint and an axe of reindeer antler, beari...
Numerous traces of inundated Stone Age settlements and forests have been located by diving in Danish waters. The sites disappeared beneath the waves due to a global rise in sea level. In Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) this sea level change has similarly resulted in the dramatic inundation of inhabited land prior to c. 3500 BC. Mesopotamia is also t...
New and more accurate C-14 dates of Alfred Rust's classical finds from Poggenwisch, Meiendorf, and Stellmoor have been carried out. At all three localities, find assemblages of the Hamburgian Culture is dated to the period c. 12500—12100 b.p. in C-14 years, whereas the industry of the Ahrensburgian Culture at Stellmoor gave ages within a narrow tim...
A few handfuls of flint knapping waste form the core of the study. They were found close together in the sand under a tumulus. Through refitting it is shown that they result from the production of blades with straight, sharp edges. The combined flint knapping techniques and procedures applied are characteristic of the Late Paleolithic Federmesser c...
The presence of shaft-hole axes of central European origin in the south Scandinavian Ertebølle Culture suggest a steady flow of trade goods across the Baltic Sea between farmers to the south and fisher-hunter-gatherers to the north. The paper presents examples of such shoe-last axes found in Denmark, discusses their date in relation to the local an...
Replica of prehistoric lithic points mounted as tips of arrows and spears were shot against a wide range of targets including wild boar, sheep and fish. The resulting fractures were compared with other kinds of use and trampling damages on a range of experimentally produced flint items. Some of the macro and microscopic wear traces that could be is...
Were humans present in Late Glacial Western Norway? This question is evaluated on the basis of finds in flint, rock and bone. The survey includes material from sites above and below the present-day sea surface. Several flint items, previously classified as Brommian tanged points, are re-classified and tentatively referred to an early stage of the P...
Farming transformed societies globally. Yet, despite more than a century of research, there is little consensus on the speed or completeness of this fundamental change and, consequently, on its principal drivers. For Northern Europe, the debate has often centered on the rich archaeological record of the Western Baltic, but even here it is unclear h...
The world lost vast parts of its habitable territory owing to rising sea level during the Late Glacial and the Early Postglacial. The archaeological record on early prehistory must, therefore, be considered highly biased and fragmentary as long as large and unique parts of it are still lying unexplored on the continental shelf. The paper outlines t...
For most of prehistory, global sea level was lower than today. Important events in human development, such as hominin dispersals during the Pleistocene Ice Age, the recolonization of formerly glaciated terrain, and the spread of agriculture took place on landscapes that are now, at least partially, underwater.
Submerged sites can offer preservati...
Research Infrastructure for Systematic Study of the Prehistoric Archaeology of the European
Submerged Continental Shelf. The slow but accelerating accumulation of data defining the sea-level changes, palaeoclimate, subaerial terrestrial soils, river drainage patterns, coastal marshes and peats, combined with properly controlled mapping and excavati...
Here we present the stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen measured in bone collagen extracted from humans, dogs, herbivores and fish from Mesolithic and Neolithic coastal and inland sites in Denmark. Bones of freshwater fish from several Early Mesolithic lake-side sites have δ13C values surprisingly similar to those seen in marine fish. We p...
Well preserved food remains from a submerged settlement on the Argus Bank bear witness to the human consumption of fish, game, nuts and fruit. 15N data derived from the bones of the inhabitants show that aquatic food was the dominant source of their dietary protein. The 13C measurements demonstrate that much of this protein derived from marine an...
An overview of the cultural heritage of Nature Park Aamose-Tissoe in Denmark is presented. The Aamose mires holds some of the most rich and well-preserved assemblages in Europe of inland settlements and fishing sites from the Mesolithic and votive sites from the Neolithic. Religious activity continued in the lakes and mires throughout the following...
There are numerous indications on exchange of material goods in Mesolithic Europe. Some of these finds represent artefacts produced in neighboring early Neolithic societies and indicate a potential relation between gift giving, transfer of marriage partners and the introduction of farming. American northwest coast Indian and aboriginal Australian e...
A series of C13 measurements on bone from humans and dogs from Danish inland sites demonstrates a high degree of coast-inland ‘commuting’ throughout the Mesolithic. Judging from the geographical distribution of sites, this traffic took place by boat. Likewise, trading across the sea was a reoccurring exercise at least during the Middle and late Mes...
Radiocarbon dates of food residue on pottery from northern European inland areas seem to be influenced significantly by the freshwater reservoir effect ("hardwater" effect) stemming from fish and mollusks cooked in the pots. Bones of freshwater fish from Stone Age Åmose, Denmark, are demonstrated to be 100 to 500 14C yr older than their archaeologi...
The archaeologist Erik WesterbyUp-front researcher on a spare-time basisThe centenary of the archaeologist and lawyer Erik Westerby, born in 1901, is the occation of this ac count of his career. It is a tale of a talented person’s magnificent achievements in his vainly fight for a seat on the scientific Parnassos.Erik Westerby had out standing inte...
Central questions in the classical debate on the neolithisation of Denmark and Scania are reformulated and tested. A transitional stage between the Ertebølle and the Funnel Beaker Cultures is outlined. Consideration is also given to C14-dates of food residues on pottery, which are demonstrated to be significantly affected by reservoir effect.
The...
Much of the Mesolithic coastal habitation of Denmark is now located below the sea. The paper takes stock of the recording and field work carried out so far and describes the immediate needs for documentation and salvage excavation with respect to Stone Age settlements on the Danish sea floor. In Danish; with captions and an extended summary in Engl...
Submerged landscapes with stumps of tree standing at their original living place are known from the sea floor many places around the world. One of the earliest and most intensely explored stump forest areas is the Danish Storebælt where up to 2 m high stumps of pine, oak, alder and lime trees are recorded as deeply as 30 m below present sea level....
Several settlements of Early Mesolithic date were located when underwater archaeologists surveyed extensive parts of the Oresund prior to the building of a bridge and tunnel between Denmark and Sweden. Additionally, remains of submerged forests with stumps still standing rooted on their original living place were located. The survey for submerged s...