SEASCAPE:
Post-Glacial Human Seascape with submerged Stone Age Megastructures hidden in the Western Baltic Sea?
- Duration:
- 01.04.2025 - 31.03.2028
- Project manager:
- Dr. Jacob Geersen
- Funding:
- Leibniz-Gemeinschaft
- Researcharea:
- Partners:
During the late Pleistocene, when the Weichselian glaciers had retreated, Northern Europe was populated by mobile hunter-gatherers. Due to their non-sedentary life style, traces of these societies are difficult to find, hampering our understanding of their life. Shallow basins of the western Baltic Sea only drowned in the Holocene and may therefore preserve man-made structures and landscapes from these times. In 2021 we discovered the 1 km long Blinkerwall in the Bay of Mecklenburg. It stands on basal till in 21 m water depth, adjacent to the shoreline of a sunken lake. Combining geophysical surveying, geological sampling, and archeological expertise, we suggested that the wall represents a Late Pleistocene drive lane for hunting reindeers. Further multidisciplinary investigations, including a structure-wide photogrammetric model, paleo-environmental reconstructions, underwater archaeology and artifact analyses are, however, necessary to test this interpretation and uncover its secrets. From legacy hydroacoustic data we have evidence for similar yet unexplored possible Stone Age megastructures in the Fehmarnsund and the Flensburg Fjord. In the SEASCAPE project we propose that submerged Stone Age megastructures have survived unnoticed in the Western Baltic Sea. Combining expertise from two Leibniz Centers (IOW & LEIZA) and two coastal Universities (Rostock & Kiel), we aim to (1) identify these structures and map them in high resolution, (2) reconstruct their paleo-environment and landscape, and (3) validate their anthropogenic origin and untangle their function. This will make them key sites to learn about the traditions, subsistence strategies, mobility patterns and territorial developments of the hunter-gatherers that followed on the ice. The uncovered seascape of Stone Age megastructures, which might be better preserved than its North Sea counterpart Doggerland, due to reduced storm-wave erosion at the seafloor, will inspire cross-disciplinary follow-up projects.