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- Cassen, Serge, et al.
(author)
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Real and ideal European maritime transfers along the Atlantic coast during the Neolithic
- 2019
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In: Documenta Praehistorica. - : University of Ljubljana. - 1408-967X .- 1854-2492. ; XLVI, s. 308-325
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The history of research on the Neolithic of the Atlantic façade shows how speculation about prehistoric mobility, especially across the sea, is mainly based on three types of archaeological evidence: megalithic monuments, rare stones, and pottery decoration. With the aim of approaching the issue from other perspectives, we have focused on the Morbihan area, a focal point of the European Neolithic during the mid-5th millennium BC. The analysis of this area has allowed us to grasp which objects, ideas and beliefs may have been desired, adopted and imitated at the time. We shall begin with an architectural concept, the standing stone. These were sometimes engraved with signs that can be directly compared between Brittany, Galicia (NW Spain) and Portugal, but for which there are no intermediate parallels in other areas of the French or Spanish coast. The unique accumulation and transformation of polished blades made of Alpine rocks and found inside tombs or in other sort of depositions in the Carnac region allowed us to establish a second link with Galicia and the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula, where certain types of the axes were imitated using a set of different rocks (sillimanite, amphibolite). Finally, the variscites and turquoises from different Spanish regions were used for the manufacture of beads and pendants at the Carnacean tombs, without it being possible – once again – to retrieve similar objects in the intermediate areas. The mastery of direct Atlantic sea routes is posed as an explanation for this geographical distribution. But, beyond the information drawn from specific artefacts – whose presence/absence should not be used in excess as an argument to endorse or underrate such movements across the ocean – we will return to a more poetic and universal phenomenon: the spell of the sea. Therefore, we will focus on the depictions of boats on the stelae of Morbihan to open such a debate.,
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- Schulz Paulsson, Bettina, 1970, et al.
(author)
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Elk Heads at Sea: Maritime Hunters and Long-Distance Boat Journeys in Late Stone Age Fennoscandia
- 2019
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In: Oxford Journal of Archaeology. - : Wiley. - 0262-5253 .- 1468-0092. ; 38:4, s. 398-419
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Tumlehed is the most well-preserved and complex prehistoric rock painting in the coastal region of south-west Sweden. Originally reported and described in 1974, we re-documented the panel using digital and IR photography, DStretch image enhancement software, and non-destructive PXRF spectroscopy. This re-documentation revealed a more complex image inventory with several previously unknown motifs and image details. The new data provide a better basis for identifying motif categories, the organization of the panel, the chronological sequence, and different frequentation periods. We report on the only known boats with an elk-head stem in southern and western Scandinavian rock art, the emergence of rock art boat depictions in the region, and evidence for longdistance maritime journeys and sea-mammal hunting in the later Stone Age. Comparisons to similar images with shoreline data in Fennoscandia narrow the time range for the date of the painting to 4200–2500 BC.
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- Schulz Paulsson, Bettina, 1970
(author)
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Radiocarbon dates and Bayesian modeling support maritime diffusion model for megaliths in Europe
- 2019
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In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. - : Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. - 0027-8424. ; 116:9, s. 3460-3465
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- There are two competing hypotheses for the origin of megaliths in Europe. The conventional view from the late 19th and early 20th centuries was of a single-source diffusion of megaliths in Europe from the Near East through the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast. Following early radiocarbon dating in the 1970s, an alternative hypothesis arose of regional independent developments in Europe. This model has dominated megalith research until today. We applied a Bayesian statistical approach to 2,410 currently available radiocarbon results from megalithic, partly premegalithic, and contemporaneous nonmegalithic contexts in Europe to resolve this long-standing debate. The radiocarbon results suggest that megalithic graves emerged within a brief time interval of 200 y to 300 y in the second half of the fifth millennium calibrated years BC in northwest France, the Mediterranean, and the Atlantic coast of Iberia. We found decisive support for the spread of megaliths along the sea route in three main phases. Thus, a maritime diffusion model is the most likely explanation of their expansion.
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