Sonja B. Grimm

Sonja B. Grimm
Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie · Zentrum für Baltische und Skandinavische Archäologie

Doctor of Philosophy

About

68
Publications
23,684
Reads
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652
Citations
Introduction
Sonja B. Grimm currently works at the Leibniz Zentrum für Archäologie, Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (LEIZA-ZBSA). Her research focuses on Late Pleistocene Archaeology, in particular the Final Palaeolithic in NW-Europe. Sonja is working as a post-doc in a CRC 1266 project about "Pioneers of the North: Transitions and transformations in Northern Europe evidenced by high-resolution datasets (c. 15,000-9,500 BCE)."
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - September 2020
University College London
Position
  • Honorary Research Associate
September 2016 - present
Zentrum für Baltische und Skandinavische Archäologie
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Description
  • The Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1266 is based at the Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel but our Palaeolithic project is installed at the ZBSA in Schleswig.
July 2014 - April 2015
Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum - Archaeological research institute
Position
  • Research Associate
Education
December 2003 - July 2014
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Field of study
  • Vor- und Frühgeschichte (Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology)
October 1997 - July 2003
University of Cologne
Field of study
  • Ur- und Frühgeschichte (Department of Prehistoric Archaeology)

Publications

Publications (68)
Book
At the end of the Pleistocene, hunters and gatherers had to adapt themselves and their social systems in North-West Europe to abrupt climate and significant environmental changes. This adaptation process is reconstructed in detail based on 25 archaeological sites and in connection with high-resolution climate and environmental archives. Based on th...
Book
Full-text available
Federmesser-Gruppen and Azilian were used almost evenly but also Arch-Backed Point (ABP) groups, Lateglacial, Late Palaeolithic, and Late Upper Palaeolithic were used to describe the material from this period. This plurality might indicate a few different groups but often they rather referred to different scales or appeared rudiments of different s...
Chapter
Full-text available
Time and timing are essential to many archaeological questions, especially when dealing with archaeo-cultural borders or transitions. In this paper, we address the transition from the Final Palaeolithic to the Early Mesolithic on the North German Plain with respect to chronological evidence. Based on several well-dated sites from the area, we aim t...
Chapter
Full-text available
This contribution presents the status quo of research on the Final Palaeolithic occupation of Schleswig-Holstein. Over the last two decades new insights became possible based on isotopic, genetic, biostratigraphic, tephrochronologic, and archaeological analyses. Some of these projects and studies are still ongoing. The material on which these analy...
Article
Full-text available
The Lieth Moor area, located in the district of Pinneberg, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, is a hotspot of Late Palaeolithic settlement activity. The exceptional abundance of archaeological sites is commonly attributed to the presence of a large palaeolake. However, in the Weichselian Late glacial, there were numerous large lakes in Schleswig-Holstein...
Preprint
The European Final Palaeolithic witnessed marked changes in almost all societal domains. Despite a rich body of evidence, our knowledge of palaeodemographic processes and regional population dynamics still needs to be improved. In this study, we present regionally differentiated estimates of absolute numbers and population densities for the Greenla...
Conference Paper
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Poster
Full-text available
The Lieth Moor area, dist. Pinneberg, is a hotspot of Late Palaeolithic settlement activity in Schleswig-Holstein. This study aims to better understand what kind of landscape was present in the Late Glacial period.
Article
Full-text available
S. B. Grimm, S. Detjens (unter Mitarbeit von T. Reuter, I. Clausen, B. V. Eriksen, S. Krüger, A. Oflaz, M.-J. Weber), Interdisziplinäre Steinzeitforschung im Liether Moor. Heimatkundliches Jahrbuch für den Kreis Pinneberg 2023, 2022, 229-245.
Article
Full-text available
Genetic investigations of Upper Palaeolithic Europe have revealed a complex and transformative history of human population movements and ancestries, with evidence of several instances of genetic change across the European continent in the period following the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). Concurrent with these genetic shifts, the post-LGM period is c...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
From the Stone Age until today, wetlands have exercised a special attraction on humans who made them their living spaces. In this session we understand “waterscapes” as environments that are used by humans and that are strongly influenced by water and are located at the transition between dry land and open water. There is a great diversity of water...
Conference Paper
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We invite papers to our session at CHAGS 13 (27 June - 1 July 2022) in Dublin. Deadline for paper submission is 4 February 2022 at: https://www.ucd.ie/chags13/academicprogramme/callforpapers/ Climate crisis, global pandemic, increasing conflicts-our world and societies face many challenges. Yet, this is not a new situation. As hunter-gatherers, hu...
Poster
Full-text available
The realities of climate change are with us: rising sea levels, melting glaciers, droughts, desertification, deforestation, changing storm tracks, and extreme weather events. Calls for socioeconomic changes are getting louder, yet implementations remain slow. Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology has often focused on responses to changing climati...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Present your research/theory in 6 minutes with max. 6 slides and then begin the discussion! Archaeology, we often claim, studies past humans, their actions, and interrelations. Yet, actually we excavate and describe static material remains of these past humans and their actions-artefacts and features-that we interpret in comparison with other findi...
Article
Full-text available
Kůlna Cave is the only site in Moravia, Czech Republic, from which large assemblages of both Magdalenian and Epimagdalenian archaeological materials have been excavated from relatively secure stratified deposits. The site therefore offers the unrivalled opportunity to explore the relationship between these two archaeological phases. In this study,...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Archaeology, we often claim, studies past humans, their actions, and interrelations. Yet, we excavate and describe static material remains of these past humans and at best crystallisations their actions-artefacts and features-that we interpret by comparing them with other findings and by invoking ethnographic analogies. Our underlying views, ideas...
Article
The presence of people in Switzerland in recently deglaciated landscapes after the Last Glacial Maximum represents human utilisation of newly available environments. Understanding these landscapes and the resources available to the people who exploited them is key to understanding not only Late Upper Palaeolithic settlement in Switzerland, but more...
Article
Full-text available
In this report, we present the contributions, outcomes, ideas, discussions and conclusions obtained at the PaleoMaps Workshop 2019, that took place at the Institute of Geography of the University of Cologne on 23 and 24 September 2019. The twofold aim of the workshop was: (1) to provide an overview of approaches and methods that are presently used...
Article
Full-text available
Central Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was dominated by polar desert and steppe-tundra biomes. Despite this, a human presence during this time period is evident at several locations across the region, including in Switzerland, less than 50 km from the Alpine ice sheet margin. It has been hypothesised that such human activity may have...
Article
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Location modeling, both inductive and deductive, is widely used in archaeology to predict or investigate the spatial distribution of sites. The commonality among these approaches is their consideration of only spatial effects of the first order (i.e., the interaction of the locations with the site characteristics). Second-order effects (i.e., the i...
Conference Paper
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The question of standardisation of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic lithic analysis Lithic material represents the dominant part of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeological record. Hence, lithic studies are an essential tool for analysing this record. Over the last one a half centuries different approaches to lithic studies have developed, often r...
Conference Paper
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Since the 1970'ies archaeological and ethnographic studies (Gendel 1982, 1984, Hodder 1977, Wiessner 1983) have explored the potentiality of arrowheads as a meaningful parameter for measuring the ethnographic identities of prehistoric groups and the relationships among them. Later on, mainly in connection with the diffusion of technological studies...
Article
Full-text available
With the emergence of modern techniques of environmental analysis and widespread availability of accessible tools and quantitative data, the question of environmental determinism is once again on the agenda. This paper is theoretical in character, attempting, for the benefit of drawing up research designs, to understand and evaluate the character o...
Article
Prominent voices in archeology have expressed deep skepticism about the role of theory in archeology, while with new, exciting methods at its disposal, archeological science is occasionally perceived as not needing theory at all. This article reflects upon the debate about theory in archeology to arrive at a robust but critical middle-range concept...
Article
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We would like to begin by thanking the journal and the commentators for their time and attention.
Conference Paper
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Session 2 "Transformation as human response to climate and environmental change?" at the GSHDL/CRC 1266 International Workshop held at Kiel University 11-16 March 2019, deadline for abstract submission: 15 November 2018 http://www.workshop-gshdl.uni-kiel.de
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Besides time, spaces and spatiality are important measures in archaeology. Intra-site analyses are used to understand local processes, while inter-site comparisons help us to understand traditional spatial organisations of groups. We address local structures on a small scale, settlement systems or kinship networks on an intermediate scale, and trad...
Conference Paper
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Call for papers for session to be held at EAA 2018, Barcelona, 5-8 September.
Article
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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...
Article
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During the last decades, the importance of deriving analogies about current challenges, such as the mitigation of natural hazards, from archaeological case studies was frequently highlighted. In this context, Resilience Theory (RT) has become a potent tool to study socio-ecological systems and, thus, meet these public demands. RT facilitates how to...
Article
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Im Rahmen der wissenschaftlichen Forschung stehen für die Universitäten in Deutschland zahlreiche Fördermöglichkeiten zur Verfügung. Zu den größten genehmigten Projekten gehören sog. ≪Zentrenbildungen≫, in denen z. B. über Exzellenzinitiativen oder Sonderforschungsbereiche (SFB) neue Forschergruppen nachhaltig eingerichtet werden. Stehen diese norm...
Presentation
Full-text available
The onset of the Weichselian Lateglacial Interstadial is one of the most prominent climatic changes since the Last Glacial Maximum. Although the Interstadial begins relatively stable, it is a period of significant environmental changes in north-western Europe. Hunter-gatherer groups had to face this instability of their environment and, consequentl...
Conference Paper
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The geographic distribution of humans largely depends on both the demographic history of populations and the climatic and ecological settings of the regions populated. In global perspective, it seems that humans had not overcome some climatic constrains before the end of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) ~25–20 ka and the beginning of the Late Glacial...
Conference Paper
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Likewise shown by G.G. Simpson for the biological evolution, tempo and mode are important factors to understand human behavioural evolution, in particular in the context of significant and rapid climatic and environmental changes such as during the Weichselian Lateglacial. In these unstable, natural surroundings, the human social systems functioned...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
http://eaaglasgow2015.com/session/adaptive-cycles-in-archaeology/ We are looking for contributions to our session ADAPTIVE CYCLES IN ARCHAEOLOGY This session will be held at the 21 st annual meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA) in Glasgow / Scotland in early September 2015. It is organised by We wonder: How did people live in...
Data
Full-text available
Look at http://monrepos-rgzm.de/forschung/projekte/aktuelle-projekte.html Scroll down to Change (Karten) Available for download as 200 dpi JPGs maps showing the development of North-West Europe (10° West to 25° East and 45 to 60° North) during the Late Weichselian, from the Last Glacial Maximum to the Younger Dryas.
Technical Report
Blog posts on how the museum was re-opened with a lot of team work while research continued. http://www.dayofarchaeology.com/author/sgrimm/
Article
Full-text available
Transitions, such as the one from the Upper to Late Palaeolithic in Europe, are episodes of cultural and demographic change, which raise questions about possible causal connections between environmental changes and human behaviour. The workshop The Upper-Late Palaeolithic Transition in Western Central Europe. Typology, Technology, Environment and D...
Article
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In January 2012, by sifting through the Gravettian lithic assemblage from the open air site Steinacker at the Archaologisches Landesmuseum Baden-Wurttemberg, Dienststelle Rastatt, one of us (L.M.) came across a hitherto unpublished triangular sandstone with a deep groove (Fig. 1), interpreted here as shaft smoother. Given the rarity of such objects...
Chapter
The Havelte point is the first implement to develop and spread genuinely across Northern Europe during the Late Glacial. Despite its interesting geographical, chronological as well as morphological position, this type has rarely been the focus of archaeological studies. In fact, since its definition in the 1930s and 1940s this point had hardly been...
Article
Following a thorough review of high-resolution environmental archives, this paper aims at discriminating the factors determining the heterogeneous repercussion of the Lateglacial Younger Dryas in Central Europe. When examining the archaeological implications of human adaptation to the subsequent changes in the natural environment two divergent biot...
Article
Full-text available
Stratified Late Glacial find localities are rare on the Great North European Plain. The natural scientific dating of finds pertinent to the settlement history of this region therefore provides a good and often the only way of constructing a substantial chronological framework for the interpretation of finds and sites, in particular as the bulk of t...
Article
Full-text available
Stratified Late Glacial find localities are rare on the Great North European Plain. The natural scientific dating of finds pertinent to the settlement history of this region therefore provides a good and often the only way of constructing a substantial chronological framework for the interpretation of finds and sites, in particular as the bulk of t...
Chapter
Full-text available
During the last 75 years the advances of dating methods in archaeology are reflected in the development of the Hamburgian chronology. The Hamburgian was first defined as an archaeological culture from a purely typological standpoint, and was subsequently placed by later research in a stratigraphically and palynologically well determined time frame....
Article
Full-text available
The relationship of the classic Hamburgian and the Havelte Group has been a matter of discussion for some decades. In order to evaluate the hypothesis that they are chronologically distinct a radiocarbon data set comprising almost 100 dates, including a number of so far unpublished ones, was examined regarding its validity. Based on this edited 14C...
Article
Full-text available
Since the pioneering work of Hermann Schaaffhausen in 1883 on the Martinsberg at Andernach and due to the protection of the area by the eruptive masses of the late Allerød Laacher See volcano, the German Central Rhineland has been known to be a promising region for the preservation and discovery of Late Glacial sites. Today, more than 120 years aft...
Article
Full-text available
A surface find of a retoucher made on a schist pebble bears engraved depictions of two elks. On the evidence of other recovered finds, comparison with other retouchers, stylistic parallels and the chosen motif itself the retoucher can most probably be attributed to a late glacial context. This rare find can be assigned to the canon of late glacial...
Article
A surface find of a retoucher made on a schist pebble bears engraved depictions of two elks. On the evidence of other recovered finds, comparison with other retouchers, stylistic parallels and the chosen motif itself, the retoucher can most probably be attributed to a Late Glacial context. This rare find can be assigned to the canon of Late Glacial...
Article
Full-text available
The late Allerød eruption of the Central Rhineland Laacher See-volcano (10,966 cal BC) was of large environmental impact, both on a regional and on a supraregional scale. Its eruptiva were deposited over an area of more than 2000 km², covering large parts of the landscape. The recent discovery of a Final Palaeolithic site near Bad Breisig shows tha...

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