Mikkel Sorensen

University of Copenhagen · SAXO Institute

Arkæologer dokumenterer i dag at hvordan vores fortid destrueres under vores fødder i hastigt øget tempo, og det stort set uden at vi opdager det. Det sker som følge af jordbearbejdning, dræning af lavbundsjorde, et mere ekstremt klima som periodevist udtørrer vådområder samt under havets overflade ved erosion pga. manglende bundvegetation og ekstr...

When looking at archaeological pieces identified as pressure-flaker tools, the means and ways of integrating a stone reduction technique into the production of regular lithic blades/bladelets, so called ‘termed’ products, in Denmark at the end of the Early Scandinavian Mesolithic period are taken into consideration. In that, this paper examines the...

This report present preliminary results from field work in 2021, work package 3.4 Dynamic Glocal Networks in the research project Activating Arctic Heritage, Focus is on excavations of 18th century inuit and early colonial sites in western part of Aasivissuit - Nipisat, but the large caribou hunting site of Aasivissuit was revisited as well.

The Danish Palaeolithic began during the Lateglacial (approximately 12,350 calBC) and lasted for about four thousand years. Only a handful of sites and organic stray finds have been precisely dated. And it is primarily on these that a preliminary chronological framework has been built. Similarly, numerous hypotheses on palaeohistory, typology, and...

Aamosen revisited-what is left? New archaeological field surveys of known Mesolithic sites in Store Åmose, West Zealand. This article presents methods and results from two seasons of fieldwork in Store Åmose (2017 and 2018), where five known Mesolithic sites have been reexamined in order to evaluate their preservation and research potential. The in...

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...

We present the analysis of an osseous finger ring from a predominantly early Neolithic context in Denmark. To characterize the artefact and identify the raw material used for its manufacture, we performed micro-computed tomography scanning, zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) peptide mass fingerprinting, as well as protein sequencing by liq...

La réduction des roches par pression intégrée dans l’Europe scandinave, il y a 9000 ans environ, voit l’apparition d’un nouvel outillage osseux. Sa réplication par un premier test expérimental livre des premiers résultats qui, parce qu’ils ne sont que partiellement archéo-compatibles, amènent à devoir considérer l’importance du rapport à l’instrume...

EAA 2019 - Call for papers Session 284: "Untangling the Final Palaeolithic and Early Mesolithic in Europe" Session format: Regular session Content: The last Ice Age came to an end 11,500 years ago when rapid climate warming of c. 5-10°C occurred within decades radically transforming Europe's environment. This change in the landscape had a signifi...

Please find the books here on the White Rose Press website - available for download as PDFs, for e-readers or buy as books! https://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/site/booktext/ ... Excavations were undertaken at Star Carr by Clark in order to find a British counterpart to the well-known European sites such as Mullerup, Holmegård, Sværdborg, Lundb...

The 26th Annual Meeting of the German Mesolithic Workgroup took place in Wuppertal from 10-12 March 2017 and was organised and hosted by Annabell Zander (University of York) and Birgit Gehlen (CRC 806, University of Cologne). In sum, more than 70 academics, students and amateur archaeologists from 8 different countries attended this conference. The...

This new volume contains 14 articles written by Palaeolithic and Mesolithic specialist, organized into four chapters, each concerning a problem field decisive to our discipline. These chapters are: 1) Archaeological theory and methodology, 2) Choices and restraints in field archaeology, 3) Dynamic perspectives on the material record, 4) The rituals...

With the interest for the technological options that were taken by the prehistoric groups to subsist, there is a field of research left empty in terms of archaeological records dated to the 8th and 7th millennia cal BC. It concerns the tool kit made from bone and antler used in Europe by stone knappers to work the lithic raw material by pressure an...

In this chapter the evolution of lithic technology during the Paleoeskimo period is explored. The diversity of lithic raw materials is considered, as well as how they have been extracted and transformed into tool blanks. This was done mainly through the production of flakes and microblades, followed by the making of a wide range of tools. The evolu...

Chaîne opératoire -analysis of the spread of western and eastern blade technologies in the Early Mesolithic of the Circum-Baltic countries, with particular attention to the spread of the pressure technique.

Pressure microblade production (Fig. 15.1) appeared with the arrival of the Paleoeskimo people (4500-800 B.P.) in the Eastern Arctic, long after the technique was established in other areas of the world. Previous assumptions have all too quickly proposed that the Paleoeskimo produced microblades by 'pressing them off' from the core. As a result, th...

In this paper a team of Scandinavian researchers identifies and describes a Mesolithic technological concept, referred to as ‘the conical core pressure blade’ concept, and investigates how this concept spread into Fennoscandia and across Scandinavia. Using lithic technological, contextual archaeological and radiocarbon analyses, it is demonstrated...

The first pressure blade concept in southern Scandinavia is identified within the Maglemosian techno-complex 3, dated to the Boreal-Atlantic transition, in the 8th millennium B.C. From technological analysis of blade products in adjacent regions, it is found that a similar concept existed through the eastern Baltic lowland and into the Western Russ...

Results of analyses of experimental induced and accidental fractures in flint blades.

Pressure microblade production (Fig. 15.1) appeared with the arrival of the Paleoeskimo people (4500–800 B.P.) in the Eastern Arctic, long after the technique was established in other areas of the world. Previous assumptions have all too quickly proposed that the Paleoeskimo produced microblades by ‘pressing them off’ from the core. As a result, th...

This article discusses recent archaeology fieldwork campaigns in Northeast Greenland, with a focus on investigating prehistoric Inuit remains. The paper endeavors to increase an understanding of the history of the prehistoric occupation of this High Arctic region, prehistoric groups’ responses to the distinct cooling throughout “the Little Ice...

The North Atlantic island communities were hit particularly hard when the Little Ice Age encroached upon them in the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries. The islanders had settled during the warm medieval period and had established well-functioning societies. In Iceland this had resulted also in the creation of a remarkable literary canon.When the cl...

In this article, the Palaeo-Eskimo ruin features of the Walrus Island site are presented and analysed. The Walrus Island site was investigated in 2008 and more than 2,000 stone features were recorded, of which 445 were the remains of dwellings attributed to Palaeo-Eskimo occupations. These ruins are described as "mid-passages," "tent rings," "clear...

A multi-disciplinary study of settlement in north-east Greenland found that life in this High Arctic zone was actually favoured by the climate brought in by the Little Ice Age (fifteenth–nineteenth century). Extensive ice cover meant high mobility, and the rare polynyas — small patches of permanently open coastal water — provided destinations, like...

The Thule culture of the Wollaston-Clavering Ø area is analysed and their settlement pattern as recorded within the area is presented and analysed in relation to the following high arctic seasons: winter, spring and summer. From the analysis it is seen that a defined and stable seasonal mobility between coast, fjords and inland existed and that the...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This chapter provides a review of proxy data from a variety of natural archives sampled in the Wollaston Forland region, central Northeast Greenland. The data are used to describe long-term environmental and climatic changes. The focus is on reconstructing the Holocene conditions particularly in the Zackenberg area. In addition, this chapter provid...

This chapter provides a review of proxy data from a variety of natural archives sampled in the Wollaston Forland region, central Northeast Greenland. The data are used to describe long-term environmental and climatic changes. The focus is on reconstructing the Holocene conditions particularly in the Zackenberg area. In addition, this chapter provid...