A simulation-based assessment of the relation between Stone Age sites and relative sea-level change along the Norwegian Skagerrak coast

Abstract

A central premise for the Stone Age archaeology of northern Scandinavia is that most coastal sites were located on or close to the contemporary shoreline when they were in use. By reconstructing the trajectory of rapid and continuous relative sea-level fall that characterises large regions of Fennoscandia, this offers a dating method termed ‘shoreline dating’ which is widely applied. However, while the potentially immense benefits of an additional source of temporal data separate from radiometric and typological methods is unquestionable, the geographical contingency and thus relative rarity of the method means that it has been under limited scrutiny compared to more established dating techniques in archaeology. This paper attempts to remedy this by quantifying the spatial relationship between Stone Age sites located below the marine limit and the prehistoric shoreline along the Norwegian Skagerrak coast. Monte Carlo simulation is employed to combine the uncertainty associated with independent temporal data on the use of the sites in the form of 14C-dates and the reconstruction of local shoreline displacement. The findings largely confirm previous hypotheses that sites older than the Late Neolithic tend to have been located on or close to the shoreline when they were occupied. Drawing on the quantitative nature of the results, a new and formalised method for the shoreline dating of sites in the region is proposed and compared to previous applications of the technique.