Thijs van Kolfschoten

Leiden University | LEI · Faculty of Archaeology

Recent investigations in the upper Lower–Middle Pleistocene deposits of the Megalopolis Basin (Greece) led to the discovery of several sites/findspots with abundant faunal material. Here, we provide an updated overview including new results on the micro- and macro-mammal fauna. Important new discoveries comprise partial hippopotamus skeletons from...

During the Early Holocene, northern China witnessed revolutionary changes, such as the emergence of sedentary lifestyles, the domestication of animals and plants, the spread of pottery making, and a radical restructuring of social relationships. During this period, the avifauna became an increasingly significant component of the diversified small g...

Paleo-archives are essential for our understanding of species responses to climate warming, yet such archives are extremely rare in the Arctic. Here, we combine morphological analyses and bulk-bone metabarcoding to investigate a unique chronology of bone deposits sealed in the high-latitude Storsteinhola cave system (68°50′ N 16°22′ E) in Norway. T...

На расстоянии примерно 340 км от устья р. Печора найден фрагмент черепа моржа неоплейстоценового возраста. Череп предположительно принадлежал половозрелому самцу атлантического моржа возрастом 13-14 лет. Радиоуглеродное датирование черепа показало запредельный для метода возраст (>45 тыс. лет). Обсуждаются данные изотопии азота и углерода из коллаг...

A fragment of a walrus skull of Neopleistocene age was found at a distance of about 340 km from the mouth of the Pechora River. The skull presumably belonged to a mature male Atlantic walrus 13-14 years old. The radiocarbon date of the walrus bone shows an age outside the method's range (>45 Ka). Nitrogen and carbon isotope data from skull collagen...

Schöningen is an important Palaeolithic locality in Central Europe, particularly famous for the wooden throwing spears that were found at the site Schöningen 13 II-4. The locality yielded also a huge collection of well-preserved small and large mammal remains from a late Middle Pleistocene sequence of deposits that forms the base of detailed palaeo...

Megalopolis basin hosted during the late Early–Middle Pleistocene (~900–150 ka) a large and shallow lake, which resulted in a stratigraphic sequence composed mainly of lacustrine sediments intercalated by lignite seams. During the last decade (2012–2022) we conducted systematic and multidisciplinary field investigations in the basin, which led to t...

Detailed sedimentological, geochemical, palynological, and aquatic-microfossil analyses on a new composite profile (Para-Reference Profile Schöningen 13 II and Zeugenblock 13 II [2018]) exposed at the archaeological excavation site of Schöningen 13 II reflect several phases of newly recorded lake level fluctuations and vegetation changes. A pronoun...

This is a response to an article by Frank Huffman and Yahdi Zaim, who commented on our earlier paper about the eastern Kendeng Hills. This is a directly link to the comment by Huffman and Zaim: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277379123001063

A cutmarked bear metatarsal and phalanx from the German open-air sites of Schöningen 12 II-1 and 12 B, respectively, correlated with the interglacial optimum of MIS 9 (ca. 320 ka), provide early evidence for the exploitation of bear skins. Archaeological sites with evidence of bear exploitation from the Lower Paleolithic are rare, with only Boxgrov...

The eastern Kendeng Hills (Java, Indonesia) expose a 1000 m thick series that is used as a stratigraphic standard, representing the emergence of eastern Java from the sea. The fluvial top is rich in vertebrate fossils and yielded the Mojokerto (Perning) hominin skullcap, which is regarded as the earliest evidence of Homo erectus on Java, with age e...

In the last 25 years, over 20 000 fossil animal remains were recovered at the Palaeolithic sites of Schöningen (Lkr. Helmstedt / D) and analysed by various researchers (van Asperen 2004; Voormolen 2008; van Kolf-schoten 2014; van Kolfschoten / Buhrs / Verheijen 2015; van Kolfschoten et al. 2015; Starkovich / Conard 2015). The mammalian faunal assem...

The locality Seweckenberge (near Quedlinburg) yielded, during the quarrying of gypsum, a large amount of Pleistocene fossils; remains that inspired Otto von Guericke in 1678 to reconstruct the famous Magdeburger Einhorn (i. e., "Magde burg Unicorn") or Guericke-Einhorn. For his reconstruction he made use of skeletal parts of recent as well as fossi...

The Pleistocene Series/Epoch of the Quaternary System/Period has been divided unofficially into three subseries/subepochs since at least the 1870s. On 30th January, 2020, the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences ratified two proposals approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy formalizing: 1) the Lower...

The Chinese open-air site Xuchang-Lingjing (Henan) is located near the border between the Palearctic and the Oriental biozone in a lowland depression at the southern edge of the North China Plain. The site yielded a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage that includes the two fragmented, incomplete human (possibly Denisovan) skulls (Xuchang 1 and Xuchang 2...

Trinil (Java, Indonesia) yielded the type fossils of Homo erectus and the world's oldest hominin-made engraving. As such, the site is of iconic relevance for paleoanthropology. However, our understanding of its larger geological context is unsatisfactory. Previous sedimentological studies are around 100 years old and their interpretations sometimes...

Bone tools have been used by hominins for over a million years and are found in a broad array of shapes and sizes. The function of metapodia exhibiting battering damage on epiphyses from the Lower Palaeolithic site of Schöningen 13 II-4, however, was unknown when they were first described in 2008. Crushing, chipping, and flaking damage on lateral a...

The discovery of a tusk and a rib of a straight-tusked elephant within layer 13 II-2c3 of the famous Lower Palaeolithic archaeological site Schöningen (district Helmstedt, Lower-Saxony, Germany) provided the reason for studying the climatic and ecological conditions of this part of the Middle Pleistocene Reinsdorf sequence in high resolution in rel...

Recently discovered fossiliferous levels in the so-called Tegelen Clay, exposed in the Tegelen-Maalbeek quarry (province of Limburg, the Netherlands), yielded two molars of the Barbary macaque Macaca sylvanus. The new finds are so far, the only Dutch Macaca fossils with a wellknown stratigraphical provenance and are, with an age of more than two mi...

The Middle to Late Pleistocene transition is shaping up to be a critical period for hominin dispersals and behavioural development in many regions of the Old World. Yet, relatively little is known about hominin behavioural variability in vast regions of the globe such as East Asia. The International Symposium aims to introduce the Lingjing site to...

Lingjing is an open-air archaic hominin site in northern China where, apart from two incomplete human skulls, thousands of lithic artefacts as well as abundant, well-preserved mammalian remains with OSL ages ranging between ≈105 ka and ≈125 ka. It has been excavated yearly since 2005. The mammalian faunal assemblage from the site is very diverse wi...

A pioneer comprehensive study of several diminutive last‐generation woolly mammoth teeth (M3) found on the coast of the East Siberian Sea between the mouths of the Alazeya and Malaya Kuropatoch'ya rivers was conducted. Two teeth belonged to one individual. These teeth have a similar lamellar frequency and enamel thickness as teeth of Mammuthus prim...

The Lower Palaeolithic, Middle Pleistocene locality Schöningen has been a focus of archaeological research for over the past two decades. The locality is best-known for the discovery of wooden spears in close association with numerous butchered remains of horses and other large mammals in the Spear Horizon (Schö 13II-4), with an age of ca. 300 kyr....

Investigations of the unconsolidated Upper Pleistocene – Holocene cave deposits of the Southern Urals resulted in detailed biostratigraphical and palaeoenvironmental data. Landscapes of this area have a mosaic character. The forests have regional features developed at the transition of Eastern European broadleaved-dark-coniferous taiga and the Sout...

Evolution of European ecosystems based on the mammalian and fpolristic data was revieled.

More than fifty years ago, Anneke T. Clason published the first English-language archaeozoological study on Dutch faunal assemblages. Inspired by the anniversary of this landmark publication, this paper presents a status overview of Dutch archaeozoology organized in twelve themes (e.g. rituals, Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, medieval period). The...

This book provides detailed reconstructions of mammal assemblages, vegetation ommunities and ecosystems of Europe during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The reconstructions are based on palaeobiological data, united in databases and with help of mathematic methods. Reconstructions are made for the fi ve most successful time intervals. The text...

The Middle to Late Pleistocene transition is shaping up to be a critical period for hominin evolution and dispersals as well as behavioural development in many regions of the Old World. Yet, relatively little is known about hominin behavioural variability in vast regions of the globe such as East Asia. In China, for example, behavioural variability...

Dental remains of water voles, comprising all species of the genus Arvicola and their ancestor(s) among the Mimomys group, are key fossils for regional stratigraphic correlation and for understanding evolutionary processes. This is possible because they are distributed over a huge geographical area of Eurasia and display a very rapid dental evoluti...

The range of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) covered the northern circumpolar region, over time varying in size and space due to changes in regional climatic conditions. The species survived multiple glacial cycles, but got extinct around the end of the last glacial, between ∼21,000 and 4000 years ago. Stable carbon (δ ¹³ C) and nitrogen...

The Bulgarian site Džuljunica-Smărdeš, dating to 6205-5529 cal. BC, is one of the oldest Neolithic sites in Europe. Both domestic cattle and caprines are present in the zooarchaeological assemblage, but Sus, in contrast, is extremely rare. It is not known if the earliest Neolithic people in Europe did rear domestic pigs, practised some form of pig...

Understanding extinction events requires an unbiased record of the chronology and ecology of victims and survivors. The rhinoceros Elasmotherium sibiricum, known as the ‘Siberian unicorn’, was believed to have gone extinct around 200,000 years ago—well before the late Quaternary megafaunal extinction event. However, no absolute dating, genetic anal...

The Bulgarian site Džuljunica-Smărdeš, dating to 6205-5529 cal. BC, is one of the oldest Neolithic sites in Europe. Both domestic cattle and caprines are present in the zooarchaeological assemblage, but Sus, in contrast, is extremely rare. It is not known if the earliest Neolithic people in Europe did rear domestic pigs, practised some form of pig...

The open cast mine at Schöningen, Germany, provides the opportunity to study climatic and environmental changes that occurred from the Middle Pleistocene until today. Therefore, researchers from several different institutes and disciplines have been collecting data here for more than 25 years. These studies not only take place on the basis of singu...

The lacustrine deposits exposed at the Lower Palaeolithic site Marathousa 1 (Megalopolis, S. Greece) and intercalated between lignite Seam II and III yielded a collection of small vertebrate remains. The assemblage includes fish and small mammals; the mammal assemblage encompasses a variety of species, dominated by voles (arvicolids) of the genera...

The Beringian Land Bridge is a well-documented dispersal corridor between the Eurasian continent and North America. Episodic sub-aerial exposure of the land bridge during the Late Cenozoic resulted from climatic oscillations and concomitant lowering of sea level. For much of the Pleistocene, dispersal was predominantly west-to-east (e.g., from Eura...

Evaluation of a right ventral scapula fragment from a mature Homotherium latidens from Schöningen, Germany (337–300 ka before present - MIS 9) revealed lesions consisting of an osteophyte at the caudal border of the glenoid cavity, and a large, multilobular, cystic feature in the medio-caudal glenoid cavity. Based on the type of lesions, their loca...

Abstract: Early in 2016, bones of a left front leg of a brown bear (Ursus arctos) were found in the dunes between Noordwijk and Zandvoort (Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen - Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes). The stratigraphical composition of the find horizon was identified as the old surface (palaeosoil) of the so-called ‘Oude Duinen’ (Old Dunes). The...

EINE ODE AN DIE GRABUNGSMANNSCHAFT An excavation celebrates its jubilee - A eulogy on the Schöningen crew For more than twenty-five years the remains of the region’s oldest history have been excavated at the Schöningen opencast lignite mine. Twenty-five years of excitement, disappointment, arduous work, enthousiasm, and passion. The excavation cre...

Discovery of the skull of Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis (Jäger, 1839) above the Arctic Circle – CORRIGENDUM - Irina V. Kirillova, Olga F. Chernova, Jan van der Made, Vladimir V. Kukarskih, Beth Shapiro, Johannes van der Plicht, Fedor K. Shidlovskiy, Peter D. Heintzman, Thijs van Kolfschoten, Oksana G. Zanina

The skull of the extinct rhinoceros Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis (Jäger, 1839) was discovered in the Chondon River valley (Arctic Yakutia, Russia) during the summer of 2014. This is the first find of Stephanorhinus above the Arctic Circle, expanding significantly the known geographic range of the genus. ¹⁴ C dating and geologic evidence indicate t...

In this Master Thesis a novel, pioneering approach is presented to study the extinction of the giant hominid primate Gigantopithecus blacki around 300 ka in the Middle Pleistocene, while early Homo in Palaeolithic Southeast Asia survived. This novel approach consists of alternative solutions to established methods, based on a multidisciplinary back...

The paper is devoted to summary and analysis of the Quaternary stratigraphic investigations and state of the stratigraphic schemes of the different regions of the European part of Russia.

An accumulation of mammoth hair, discovered in the Bol’shaya Chukochya River valley (northeast Yakutia, Russia),was found to contain remains of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, including plants, insects, crustaceans, birds and mammals. Radiocarbon dating indicated that this post-mortem taphocoenosis represented multiple time periods. The mammoth...

A summary of published and unpublished data on the stratigraphy of the early Middle Pleistocene of the Southern Urals region is presented in this paper. It follows previous reviews about the characteristics of the Pleistocene deposits of the easternmost part of Europe. Deposits of different origin, which constitute the regional stratigraphic units,...

The Holocene history of small mammal fauna is of interest as an example of transformation of communities under the natural changes of climate. Study object were 2720 molars of small mammals from localities in Sharyu River valley (left tributary of Usa River). Molars were studied by standard palaeontological techniques. 14C AMS method was used for d...

The Lower Paleolithic locality of Schöningen 13 II-4 is famous for the discovery of wooden spears found amongst the butchered remains of numerous horses and other large herbivores. Although the spears have attracted the most interest, other aspects of the associated artifact assemblage have received less attention. Here we describe an extraordinary...

Archaeological finds including spears, other wooden artifacts, lithic artifacts, and bones with impact scars and cut marks document the repeated presence of hominins on the shoreline of an approximately 300,000 year old lake near Schöningen in Northern Germany. Continuing excavations have uncovered in the locality "Schöningen" at least 20 sites dat...

Remarkable and intriguing is the discovery of Desman remains in Sed’yu-1 (Komi Republic, Russia) in the far northeast of Europe; finds that are dated to the Bølling Interstadial. Mammalian communities including desman are dominated by the Siberian lemming. A review of Lateglacial desman finds in Europe and the Urals as well as the contemporaneous m...

Research on ecosystem resilience and climate–ecosystem interactions is extremely complex due to the large variety of factors that play a role in ecosystem functioning. This study aimes at determining which factors are involved in ecosystem resilience, which methods are needed to investigate this, and how archaeology can contribute to such research....

A recent update of the PALEOFAUNA database (including new 14C dates) revealed new insights in the changes in the geographical distribution and the (local) extinction of larger mammals in Northern Eurasia during the second part of the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene, a period with dramatic changes in climate. In this paper, we present and discuss...

The stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen 13C and 15N extracted from bone collagen provide a unique perspective on the diet of Palaeolithic animals as individuals. Fauna from the Reinsdorf interglacial at Schöningen, a Middle Palaeolithic archeological site complex in Lower Saxony (Germany), has been successfully analyzed using this methodology. T...