Mikael A. Manninen

Mikael A. Manninen
University of Helsinki | HY · ECOENV/HELSUS

PhD

About

82
Publications
26,927
Reads
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710
Citations
Introduction
I'm a senior researcher in the Past Present Sustainability Research Unit at the University of Helsinki Ecosystems and Environment Research Programme, and associate professor of Environmental archaeology (University of Turku) and Archaeology (University of Helsinki). My main research topics are in past socio-ecological systems, hunter-gatherer archaeology, environmental archaeology & history, technological organization and human palaeoecology.
Additional affiliations
March 2019 - present
University of Helsinki
Position
  • PostDoc Position
April 2018 - December 2019
University of Oslo
Position
  • Researcher
April 2015 - April 2018
University of Oslo
Position
  • PostDoc Position

Publications

Publications (82)
Article
Full-text available
Population genetic studies often overlook the evidence for variability and change in past material culture. Here, the authors use a Mesolithic example to demonstrate the importance of integrating archaeological evidence into the interpretation of the Scandinavian hunter-gatherer genetic group. Genetic studies conclude that this group resulted from...
Article
Full-text available
Studies that employ probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to study past population size often use exponential increase in radiocarbon dates with time as a standard of comparison for detecting population fluctuations. We show that in the case of early postglacial interior Scandinavia, however, the summed probability distribution of radiocar...
Article
Full-text available
Measurement systems are important drivers of cultural and technological evolution. However, the evolution of measurement is still insufficiently understood. Many early standardized measurement systems evolved from body-based units of measure, such as the cubit and fathom, but researchers have rarely studied how or why body-based measurement has bee...
Article
Full-text available
Prehistoric chewed pitch has proven to be a useful source of ancient DNA, both from humans and their microbiomes. Here we present the metagenomic analysis of three pieces of chewed pitch from Huseby Klev, Sweden, that were dated to 9,890–9,540 before present. The metagenomic profile exposes a Mesolithic oral microbiome that includes opportunistic o...
Article
Full-text available
Few cultural practices beyond language are as widespread as string figure games. Their global distribution and potential to yield insights into cultural transmission and cognition have long been noted. Yet, it remains unknown how or when this behaviour originated and to what extent shared motifs are signals of repeated innovations or deep cultural...
Article
Full-text available
Loppuvuodesta 2023 Vantaan Sanomat julkaisi kirjoituksen, jossa kerrottiin Suomen ensiasuttajien olleen todennäköisesti tummaihoisia. Tieto pohjautui viimeksi kuluneen vuosikymmenen aikana tehtyyn tieteelliseen tutkimukseen. Julkaisemista seurasi kohu sosiaalisessa mediassa. Kohu seurasi kansainvälistä esimerkkiä, sillä samankaltaisia kansainvälisi...
Article
Full-text available
This paper explores the role of measurement as a cognitive technology across human history, emphasizing the coexistence of formal and informal measurement systems. While standardized systems dominate contemporary culture and are well documented across large‐scale societies of the past, this manuscript highlights the less explored domain of informal...
Preprint
Integral to the fabric of human technology, knots have shaped survival strategies throughout history. As the ties that bind, their evolution and diversity have afforded human cultural change and expression. This study examines knotting traditions over time and space. We analyse a sample of 332 knots from 83 ethnographically or archaeologically docu...
Research
Full-text available
This Special Issue seeks to assemble a collection of studies focused on different geographical, ecological, and cultural settings from across Eurasia, dealing with the impacts of the ‘8.2 ka BP event’ on human socio-ecological systems. Recognised across a plethora of globally distributed palaeoenvironmental proxies, the ‘8.2 ka BP event’ is a promi...
Preprint
Few cultural practices beyond language are as widespread as string figure games. Their global distribution and potential to yield insights into cultural transmission and cognition have long been noted. Yet, it remains unknown how or when this behavior originated and to what extent shared motifs are signals of repeated innovations or deep cultural t...
Chapter
Full-text available
Abstract After its development in Uppsala in the early 1990’s, quartz fracture analysis has mainly been applied and discussed in terms of predictability, fragment selection and fragment use. However, the way the understanding of quartz fragmentation, and the classification of fragments into types, can be applied in other fields of lithic analysis,...
Presentation
Full-text available
Tieteen päivien esitelmä Suomen ensiasuttajista katsottavissa TiedeTV:ssä: https://youtu.be/aEwMqDBrHKA?t=638
Chapter
Full-text available
Keitä olivat Suomen ensimmäiset asukkaat? Tuoreen tutkimustiedon valossa he olivat iholtaan ja hiuksiltaan tummia ja muualta tänne muuttaneita. Kuulostaako rohkealta väitteeltä? Kenties jonkun mielestä, mutta väitteelle on hyvät perusteet. Niiden esittäminen on hyvä aloittaa luomalla katsaus siihen, milloin ensimmäiset asukkaat mannerjään sulamisen...
Article
Full-text available
This article reviews how simple heuristics – ‘rules of thumb’ – have guided human adaptation and the evolution of complex cultures. First, we argue that rules of thumb have been important catalysts for the evolution of human knowledge systems in the Holocene past. Through a variety of examples and case studies, we discuss how human cultures have us...
Article
Full-text available
The wood- and peatland dominated Finnish Lapland is part of the northern boreal vegetation zone, except for patches of alpine tundra in the altitudinally highest lying areas close to the Norwegian and Swedish borders in the north, and the south-western corner of the area that belongs to the middle boreal vegetation zone (Elmhagen et al. 2015: Fig....
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The Early Holocene was a period of climate amelioration, yet paleoclimate records show punctuated episodes of climate change. Premier among these is the '8.2 ka BP event'. While centered on 8.2 ka BP, the duration of this abrupt cooling oscillation was likely much longer, and its onset reaching back to 8.4 ka BP. The synchronicity of the event acro...
Preprint
Full-text available
Studies employing probability distributions of radiocarbon dates to study past population size, mostly use exponential increase in radiocarbon dates with time as a standard of comparison for detecting population fluctuations. However, in the case of early postglacial interior Scandinavia the model of exponential increase is not valid. Instead, the...
Preprint
Full-text available
Measurement systems are important drivers of cultural and technological evolution. However, the evolution of measurement is still insufficiently understood. Many early standardized measurement systems evolved from body-based units of measure, such as the cubit and fathom, but researchers have rarely studied the specifics of how or why body-based me...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this paper we describe the results of small-scale archaeological fieldwork projects carried out in North Karelia, Finland, in 2003-2014, which ended up having a far greater research impact than anyone could have anticipated. The projects yielded a multitude of new and relevant information, especially on the Early Mesolithic, including the earlie...
Article
Full-text available
Yleistajuisesti kiviveitsistä, niiden valmistuksesta ja käytöstä.
Article
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Slotted bone tools are an iconic example of composite tool technology in which change in one of the components does not require changing the design of the other parts. Commonly, slotted bone tools are seen through the lens of lithic technology, highlighting organizational aspects related to serial production of insets, reliability and maintainabili...
Preprint
Full-text available
This article combines insights from ecological rationality and cultural evolution to illustrate how simple heuristics – colloquially, “rules of thumb” – have guided human behaviour and the evolution of complex cultures. Through a variety of examples and case studies, we discuss how human cultures have used rules of thumb in domains as diverse as fo...
Article
Full-text available
Historical records are incomplete templates for preparing for an uncertain future. The global utility of past ecological knowledge for present/future purposes is questioned as we move from Holocene to Anthropocene. To increase the adaptive capacity of today’s societies, generalizable strategies must be identified for coping with uncertainty over a...
Article
Full-text available
The article describes the results of the interdisciplinary studies of a unique bone slotted point from Tłokowo, north-eastern Poland. The artefact was discovered in 1989, and indirect dating suggested an Early Mesolithic date. In this article we present the results of direct radiocarbon dating of the point, which shows that it is almost 2000 years...
Article
Full-text available
All too often archaeological objects are found as stray finds. As such, they have little or no contextual information, which often makes them difficult to handle analytically and in terms of their exhibition appeal. As a consequence, they often languish un-researched in museum storerooms and there is the critical risk that such objects fall victim...
Book
Full-text available
Articles 1. The hidden sources. Combining aDNA, stone tools, and computer modeling in the study of human colonization of Norway Per Persson, Mikael A. Manninen & Eva Daskalaki 2. Lipid residues in early hunter-gatherer ceramics from Finland Vasiliki Papakosta & Petro Pesonen 3. Changing perspectives. Thin section and ICP analysis of Neolithic po...
Article
Full-text available
A two-way colonization pattern has been observed for most terrestrial pioneer and boreal forest species in Norway after the last glacial period: One route from the south, and another from the east through northernmost Fennoscandia. It is generally accepted that these routes represent plant and animal populations spreading from separate glacial refu...
Article
Full-text available
Human demography research in grounded on the information derived from ancient DNA and archaeology. For example, the study on the early postglacial dual-route colonisation of the Scandinavian Peninsula is largely based on associating genomic data with the early dispersal of lithic technology from the East European Plain. However, a clear connection...
Preprint
Full-text available
The discussion of an early postglacial dual-route colonization of the Scandinavian Peninsula is largely based on associating genomic data to an early dispersal of lithic technology from the East European Plain. However, a direct link between the two has been lacking. We tackle this problem by analysing human DNA from birch bark pitch mastics, chewi...
Article
Full-text available
In eastern Fennoscandia numerous biological and physical proxy records provide ample evidence of Holocene climate-environment dynamics. The region therefore has great promise for studies concentrating on the impacts of past climate change on human populations in the early Holocene, that is, in the period that saw the beginning of postglacial human...
Chapter
Full-text available
A. Tarasov, M. Manninen, P. Heikkilä, N. Anttiroiko, P. Pesonen 2017. The spread of local materials during initial colonization of Eastern Fennoscandia (the case of lidite) Maintenance of contacts between the first colonizers of Eastern Fennoscandia with the southern core areas is evidenced by the presence of flint artefacts in the majority of th...
Article
Full-text available
Experimental studies suggest that the high fragmentation tendency of vein quartz can be controlled to some degree by favorable technological choices, i.e., by producing thicker artifacts and by using bipolar-on-anvil reduction. In this paper, I explore the question of whether strategies that reduce quartz fragmentation were used in prehistory and p...
Poster
Full-text available
The earliest radiocarbon-dated postglacial site in Finland, Jokivarsi 1 site in Sarvinki area, presented.
Book
Full-text available
ABSTRACT This dissertation focuses on Late Mesolithic (ca. 8450–6850 cal BP) lithic technological changes in the northernmost parts of Finland, Norway, and Sweden and on the relationship between these changes and the 8.2 ka climate event that was caused by a disruption in the North Atlantic Thermohaline circulation. The study uses a framework deri...
Chapter
Full-text available
In this contribution, we focus on the Lake Sarvinki area in eastern Finland and its position in the postglacial colonisation of Fennoscandia. Two sites (Rahakangas 1 and Jokivarsi 1) with radiocarbon dates reaching as far as c. 11,100–10,600 cal BP, contemporary to the late part of Yoldia Sea phase in the Baltic Sea basin, have been studied on a fo...
Poster
Full-text available
After the introduction of radiocarbon dating methodology for cremated bones (Lanting et al 2001), the process was also soon brought into use in the University of Helsinki, Finland (Jungner 2003). The acidic soil tends to effectively destroy ordinary bone material in eastern Fennoscandia. Therefore, the dating of cremated/burnt bone has been conside...
Poster
Full-text available
Introduction of the environmental and economical setting of the earliers postglacial pioneer settlement in eastern Finland. Special focus is on the Sarvinki area, near the town of Joensuu.
Chapter
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The purpose of this paper is to make the first comprehensive survey of inland sites with oblique points in the northernmost parts of Fennoscandia. The chronological and technological relation of these points with similar points from Mesolithic contexts discussed in earlier Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish studies is also assessed. After a presentatio...
Chapter
Full-text available
Excavations conducted in 2004 at the Mesolithic Mávdnaávži 2 site in northern Finnish Lapland revealed an assemblage consisting mainly of chert deriving from the Barents Sea coast, although artefacts of local raw material were also found. Several details in the technological organization suggest that the site represents a location where a small num...
Chapter
Full-text available
Excavations conducted in 2004 at the Mesolithic Mávdnaávži 2 site in northern Finnish Lapland revealed an assemblage consisting mainly of chert deriving from the Barents Sea coast, although artefacts of local raw material were also found. Several details in the technological organization suggest that the site represents a location where a small num...
Chapter
Full-text available
Kirjoitus käsittelee Utsjoen Paistunturin erämaa-alueella sijaitsevia pyyntikuoppakohteita ja niistä tehtyjä havaintoja. Näiden kohteiden asemaa tarkastellaan suhteessa lähiympäristön pyyntikuoppakohteisiin, ja myös laajemmin pohjoismaisen pyyntikuoppatutkimuksen valossa. Tietoa kuoppakohteiden sijoittumisesta ympäristöönsä käytetään apuna tehtäess...
Chapter
Full-text available
Lately, anthropologists and archaeologists have emphasized the social di mensions of all technologies. However, it is also well known that the quality and quantity of lithic resources affected the organisation of the prehistoric scarce or absent, simple lithic technologies often prevailed. These are not easily converted into reconstructions of soci...
Chapter
Full-text available
This paper presents results of surveys carried out in the Paistunturi highland area in Utsjoki, Northern Finnish Lapland and discusses the Mesolithic use of the area. The lithic assemblage of the only clearly Mesolithic site in the area, the Mávdnaávži 2, is then described and compared with North Norwegian coastal assemblages.
Article
Full-text available
This article provides a short research history of flint studies in Finland. The controversies related to ideas about the manufacture of bifaces and the origin of flint in Finland during the Typical Comb Ware period in particular are addressed. In line with the research history, the ongoing technological analysis, i. e. studying the technological or...