The Resettlement of Northern Europe

Abstract

As the climate began to ameliorate after the last Ice Age, pioneer plants, animals, and people began to resettle northern Europe. The recolonization of the North European Plain and the maritime and mountainous landscapes of Scandinavia is associated with variants of the Magdalenian techno-complex. Structured by the successive maturation of landforms as well as by a number of catastrophic environmental changes, this process took the form of a series of colonization pulses followed by contractions and renewed colonization efforts. With the introduction of important new technologies such as the bow and arrow, watercraft, and fishing technology as well as domesticated dogs, this demographically and environmentally dynamic period saw the expansion of the geographic as well the behavioural dimensions of the hunter-gatherer niche. Underwritten by extensive mobility, trade, and exchange networks, these forager populations were able to explore and settle even the most remote parts of Arctic northern Europe early during the Holocene.