Late Glacial hunter-gatherer reactions to the Younger Dryas cooling event in the southern and eastern Baltic regions of Europe

Abstract

The sudden climatic change of Younger Dryas in the southern and eastern Baltic regions caused a change of birch-pine forests into park tundra and the return of reindeer herds from the north. This environmental impact seems to have led to notable changes in local hunter-gatherer tool-kits and subsistence and mobility behaviors depending mainly on reindeer herds in northern Central Europe. After initial glacial retreat, the Baltic was first an inland lake and at the end of Younger Dryas, the Yoldia Sea. Throughout these regions, various tanged point groups (Brommean, Ahrensburgian, Swiderian and Desnenian) dominated, broadly overlapping one other in time. They were well adapted to local environment niches in spite of difficult climatic conditions. Swiderian and other groups living in Poland, Belarus and Lithuania developed a complex system of lithic raw material procurement and exchange over distances up to 600 km. They used core reduction methods to make straight blades for points. With the improvement of climate in Preboreal, tanged point groups either moved northward or changed their technology into that of Mesolithic microliths.