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The Stone Age site Riņņukalns, Latvia, is the only well-stratified shell midden in the Eastern Baltic. In this paper, we present new interdisciplinary results concerning its dating, stratigraphy, features, and finds to shed light on the daily life of a fisher population prior to the introduction of domesticated animals. The undisturbed part of the midden consists of alternating layers of unburnt mussel shell, burnt mussel shell and fish bone, containing artefacts, some mammal and bird bones, and human burials. Two of them, an adult man and a baby, are discovered recently and date to the calibration plateau between 3350 and 3100 cal BC, and to the later 4th millennium, respectively. Stable isotopes suggest a diet based heavily on freshwater fish, and this is supported not only by ten thousands of identified fish remains, but also by a fish bone concentration nearby the skull of the man, which is interpreted as remain of a grave gift (possible fish soup). Of special interest are the baby’s stable isotope values. It shows that the mother’s diet was atypical (perhaps because she was non-local), and/or that dietary stress during pregnancy increased fractionation between the mother’s diet and her bloodstream.

This article discusses the imagery of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines which accompanied eleven burials in the Stone Age cemetery at Zvejnieki, Latvia. These burials date to the sixth, fifth and early-mid fourth millennia cal BC, according to radiocarbon dates of human remains from ten of the eleven burials, three of which were dated for this paper. The figurines are considered in terms of their characteristic formal qualities and their position within graves. Parallels are drawn with similar finds from elsewhere in the Baltic region. The imagery employed appears to be based on observations of nature, the fishing and hunting lifeways of these communities, and their beliefs concerning life after death, which were not apparently affected by the transitions from Mesolithic to Neolithic, and between Early Neolithic Narva culture and Middle Neolithic Typical Comb Ware Culture. Key words: Zvejnieki, Stone age, Burial ground, Radiocarbon dating, Anthropomorphic and Zoomorphic figurines DOI: http://dx.doi.org/ 10.15181/ab.v25i0.1833

Zvejnieki, on Lake Burtnieks in northeastern Latvia, is the largest known prehistoric cemetery in the eastern Baltic; > 300 inhumations, most dating to c.7000–3000 cal BC, have been excavated. Archaeozoological and artefactual evidence from graves and nearby settlement layers show that throughout this period, the community depended on wild resources for subsistence, with a particular emphasis on fishing. Dietary stable isotopes (δ 15 N and δ 13 C) from human remains show significant dietary variation within the Zvejnieki population, in terms of access to and dependence on freshwater and marine species (Eriksson 2006); we provide new stable isotope data for another 13 individuals. Elsewhere, we have proposed a method to correct the calibrated radiocarbon ( 14 C) dates of prehistoric burials in the Lake Burtnieks region for dietary freshwater and marine reservoir effects (FRE/MRE) (Meadows et al. 2015). Here, we use this method to correct the dates of 40 individuals (including 3 from the nearby 4th millennium shell-midden site, Riņņukalns) for whom we now have both 14 C and stable isotope data, and test whether there is any evidence that human diets changed over time, rather than simply varying between contemporaneous individuals. Three interesting transitions can be discerned: a shift away from high-trophic-level foods in the earlier 6th millennium cal BC, a diversification of diets in the late 5th millennium, with both more terrestrial and more coastal foods consumed, and a narrowing of diets in the mid-4th millennium, to concentrate on freshwater resources.

The paper reflects upon recent international research at Zvejnieki in northern Latvia, a renowned complex of a burial ground and two settlement sites used in the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Since its discovery and first excavations in the 1960s, Zvejnieki continues to produce evidence that provides new grounds for understanding mortuary practises and ancient lifeways. This information is relevant for other contemporary sites in Europe revealing new and hitherto unexpected elements of burial traditions. It is suggested that the Zvejnieki population was partly mobile, and the site was one of the places to bury the dead. The ancestral link was established through transportation and use of occupational debris from more ancient sites and through the incorporation of earlier burial space or even burials into the new graves. The depth of a burial also appears to be a significant variable in ancient mortuary practices.

The Neolithic site Riņņukalns in the Lake Burtnieks/River Salaca area in northern Latvia is the only freshwater shell midden in the eastern Baltic Sea area. An excavation carried out in 2011 revealed an intact stratigraphy with alternating layers of unburnt and burnt mussel shells and yielded various kinds of archaeological finds, among them several thousand fish remains. To gain an understanding of the fish species and specimens caught by the Neolithic settlers, and to discern any temporal development in the fish species composition, we analysed fish remains from different sections and layers. Results from both the archaeozoological and stable isotope data, give evidence for a change in the relevance of fish species during the period of use, and they also provide information for reconstructing the former river and lake hydrology in the vicinity of the midden. The Stone Age landscape seems to have been very similar to the present situation, so that the study area has been an extraordinarily stable ecosyst...

A major assemblage of Mesolithic and Neolithic wooden artefacts has been recovered from the bed of the River Užava at Sise, in the coastal belt of western Latvia. New archaeological investigation has also produced wooden remains and other evidence of occupation on the riverbank. On the basis of multi-proxy environmental data and radiocarbon dating, this article offers a first attempt to place the human activity in a palaeolandscape context. The earliest evidence of human presence is provided by wooden artefacts dated to c. 10,500–9700 cal. BP, during the Ancylus Lake transgression. These remains are thought to reflect fishing activities in the shallows of the Ventspils Bay, which existed during the transgression. The regression that followed brought a return to river-valley conditions at the site, and the next recorded period of human activity, evidenced by 14C-dated antler tool finds, is associated with the beginning of the Littorina Sea transgression, culminating c. 7500 cal. BP. With the formation of a new Ventspils Bay/Lagoon, the Sise site, at or near the river mouth, would have regained its status as an advantageous fishing location. Archaeological finds indicate continued human activity c. 6000–4000 cal. BP, even though the sea level was now lower and this was no longer a river-mouth location. Such a pattern of recurrent human occupation during the early to middle Holocene, associated with repeated shifts of the shoreline, appears to be characteristic of the central region of the Baltic Sea Basin.

The prehistoric shell middens of Atlantic Europe consist of marine molluscs, but the eastern Baltic did not have exploitable marine species. Here the sole recorded shell midden, at Riņņukalns in Latvia, is on an inland lake and is formed of massive dumps of freshwater shells. Recent excavations indicate that they are the product of a small number of seasonal events during the later fourth millennium BC. The thickness of the shell deposits suggests that this was a special multi-purpose residential site visited for seasonal aggregations by pottery-using hunter-gatherer communities on the northern margin of Neolithic Europe.

Riņņukalns is the only known prehistoric shell midden in the eastern Baltic, and is one of the few middens in northern Europe consisting mainly of freshwater mussel shells. Situated on the Salaca River at the outlet of Lake Burtnieks, in northeastern Latvia, the site was originally excavated in the 1870s, and reinvestigated several times over the following decades. A new excavation in 2011 showed that part of the midden remained intact. The new exposure, dated to the later 4th millennium cal BC, yielded rich fishbone and mollusk shell assemblages, herbivore, human and bird bones, and a wide range of artifacts typical of a subsistence economy based on fishing, hunting, and gathering. Human remains from burials excavated in the 1870s were also located in archives. The co-occurrence at Riņņukalns of human remains with a broad range of terrestrial and aquatic food remains provides an ideal setting to study freshwater reservoir effects and other isotopic signals of diet and mobility. The extent of 14C depletion in local freshwater resources is an essential parameter for such studies; on the basis of 14C ages of modern and paleoenvironmental samples, we estimate that the applicable reservoir age in Lake Burtnieks is in the order of 800–900 14C yr.

Over 3000 prehistoric bone and antler artifacts, collected in the late 1930s from the former lakebed of Lake Lubāns, are held by the National History Museum of Latvia. This collection is remarkable not only as one of the largest known assemblages of bone implements in northern Europe, but also in terms of diversity of forms. The most elaborately worked objects include harpoons, often with two rows of barbs and spade-shaped bases, which are believed to date to the Late Paleolithic, and to be among the oldest organic artifacts ever found in Latvia. Four broken specimens were sampled in 2011 for accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating, stable isotope analysis, and taxonomic attribution by ZooMS. The results support the interpretation that these artifacts were made from large cervid bones, and date all four objects to the early Preboreal (mid-10th millennium cal BC). The Lake Lubāns harpoons therefore fall in the same period as similar harpoons from Denmark, northern Germany, and Poland, although only a handful of these have been dated directly. DOI: 10.2458/56.16957

The well-known Mesolithic cemeteries of Northern Europe have long been viewed as evidence of developing social complexity in those regions in the centuries immediately before the Neolithic transition. These sites also had important symbolic connotations. This study uses new and more detailed analysis of the burial practices in one of these cemeteries to argue that much more is involved than social differentiation. Repeated burial in the densely packed site of Zvejnieki entailed large-scale disturbance of earlier graves, and would have involved recurrent encounters with the remains of the ancestral dead. The intentional use of older settlement material in the grave fills may also have signified a symbolic link with the past. The specific identity of the dead is highlighted by the evidence for clay face masks and tight body wrappings in some cases.

The Zvejnieki Stone Age1 complex in northern Latvia includes one of the most significant hunter–fisher–gatherer cemeteries in northern Europe in terms of both the exceptional number of individuals buried there and the extremely long period of use: more than 300 individuals interred over a period of at least four millennia. New results of archaeozoological studies and palaeodiet investigations performed on the Zvejnieki human remains are presented here, together with 18 new radiocarbon dates. It is clear from the stable isotope analyses that the Zvejnieki people were heavily reliant on freshwater fish until the end of the Early Neolithic, when the consumption of fish declined somewhat, although it still made an important contribution to the diet. The Late Neolithic individuals in Corded Ware flexed burials at Zvejnieki and elsewhere in Latvia show a distinct dietary pattern, pointing towards animal husbandry. The faunal remains found in settlement layers confirm the trends revealed by bone chemistry, where...

A total of 317 burials, mostly from the Stone Age, have been detected in the Zvejnieki archaeological complex in northern Latvia. Animal bones are often found in Zvejnieki graves. Some of them are modified into artefacts like pendants and can be associated with the human burials as grave goods. However, the behavioural interpretation of unmodified animal bones is less straightforward. By dating human and animal bones with the radiocarbon method it is possible to investigate whether animal bones were intended as grave goods or deposited in the grave area due to other activities. Bird bones are present in sixteen Mesolithic and Neolithic burials at Zvejnieki. We dated six unmodified bird bone and three human bone samples from Zvejnieki in order to investigate whether bird bones are contemporary with humans and thus most likely part of the grave. Four of the bird specimens are of markedly different age from the human remains dated in this study or in previous studies and cannot be interpreted as grave goods....

A total of 45 subfossil reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) antlers and bones - artefacts excluded - have been found over the years in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The relatively high number of specimens suggests a stable residence of the species in the eastern Baltic region. For the first time, 12 of these finds were radiocarbon-dated. The ages of the samples range between 12085 and 9970 C-14 yr BP (14180-11280 cal. yr BP), and cover the Lateglacial and early Holocene, a time period during which climatic conditions shifted from periglacial to temperate. The dates suggest a rapid colonization of the area during the deglaciation period and a local extinction around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. The results of the study do not support the theory that the recent wild reindeer populations of northern Europe had their origin in the Late Weichselian reindeer populations of the eastern Baltic region. (Less)