Climate Change and Early Humans in the North

The state of Lower Saxony has a particularly rich cultural heritage from the Ice Age with sensational find sites starting with the 300,000-year-old Schöningen site, which provided the earliest complete wooden weapons ever found in the world. Other famous neanderthal sites include for example Salzgitter-Lebenstedt, Ochtmissen, Lehringen with the Lance of Lehringen and the Unicorn Cave in the Harz Mountains, where in 2019 the spectacular discovery of an ornate giant deer bone was made (Image 1-4). The subsequent Upper Paleolithic is also represented by some important sites. Especially at the rock shelters in the Reinhäuser Forest (Image 5, 6), long stratigraphies from the Middle Paleolithic to the Mesolithic have been documented in the past decades.

In 2023 an interdisciplinary team started the project "Climate Change and Early Humans in the North" (CCEHN) with the aim to re-evaluate the Paleolithic record of Lower Saxony on the background of the fundamental climatic changes of the last 300.000 years. The important Paleolithic sites in Lower Saxony are not only excellent archives for studying the cultural development of people in the north, but they also offer valuable paleoecological data which allow insights into the adaptive abilities of people to natural climate change events. The joint project brings together expertise of geo- and environmental sciences and archaeology from different Universities and research institutes of Lower Saxony such as Universities of Braunschweig, Lüneburg, Göttingen and Hannover, as well as the Niedersächsisches Institut für Historische Küstenforschung in Wilhelmshaven, the Leipnitz Institute for Applied Geophysics and the Niedersächsische Landesamt für Denkmalpflege in Hannover. We will apply both well established and new cutting-edge methods. Among others there are planned archaeological excavations, high-resolution geophysical measurements, corings at various sites as well as Luminescence dating. Pollen analysis, chironomid larvae evaluations and aDNA anaylsis will help to reconstruct past ecosystems and create climate models for selected time slices.

The Seminar for Prehistory and Early History of the University of Göttingen team is participating in this project with a palaeoenvironmental approach. We focus on the period from the disappearance of Neanderthals in northern Germany to the Late Glacial (c. 50 to 13 ka BP). This is a period of unstable climatic conditions including extremely cold phases (Last Glacial Maximum) to which early Modern Humans had to adapt. Within the framework of a dissertation by Tilman Böckenförde, old and new information from Upper Paleolithic sites will be discussed and connected to palaeoecological data obtained from new excavations in Lower Saxony. Thus, statements on the adaptation of humans to natural environments and climatic conditions but also with regard to migration are to be made. In addition to scientific publications in specialist journals, the general public will also be informed about the results of the work.
The CCEHN-project is financially supported by the state of Lower Saxony and the Volkswagen Foundation ("SPRUNG"-initiative).


Website
Climate Change and Early Humans in the North (CCEHN)


Excavation reports
Abri Stendel_Herbst_2023
Seulberg_Sommer_2023

Contacts:

Prof. Dr. Thomas Terberger
Georg-August- Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Göttingen
Nikolausbergerweg 15
37073 Göttingen

and

Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Denkmalpflege
Scharnhorststraße 1
30175 Hannover
thomas.terberger@phil.uni-goettingen.de

Tilman Böckenförde M.A.
Georg-August- Universität Göttingen
Seminar für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Göttingen
Nikolausbergerweg 15
37073 Göttingen
tilman.boeckenfoerde@uni-goettingen.de

Literature:

K. Grote, Die Abris im südlichen Leinebergland bei Göttingen. Archäologische Befunde zum Leben unter Felsschutzdächern in urgeschichtlicher Zeit. (3 Bände) - Oldenburg 1994.

K. Grote, Vom Leben unter Felsschutzdächern. Jäger und Sammler in Südniedersachsen am Ende der letzten Eiszeit. - In: EisZeit. Das große Abenteuer der Naturbeherrschung. Begleitbuch zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung. Hildesheim und Stuttgart 1999, 223-239.

K. Grote, Felsenfeste Wohnungen der Urgeschichte: Die Felsschutzdächer (Abris) im Göttinger Raum. Wegweiser zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte Niedersachsens Heft 30, Oldenburg 2014.

A. KOTULA / D. LEDER / J. LEHMANN / F. HILLGRUBER / R. NIELBOCK / T. TERBERGER, Eiszeitliche Besiedlung in Niedersachsen Höhlen - neue Forschungen an der Einhornhöhle im Harz, Ldkr. Göttingen. Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 88, 2019, 213 –231. https://doi.org/10.11588/nnu.2019.1.95725

D. Leder / R. Herrmann / M. Hüls / G. Russo / P. Hoelzmann / R. Nielbock / U. Böhner / J. Lehmann / M. Meier / A. Schwalb / A. Tröller-Reimer / T. Koddenberg / T. Terberger, A 51,000-year-old engraved bone reveals Neanderthals’ capacity for symbolic behaviour. Nature Ecology & Evolution 5(9), 2021. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01487-z

D. Leder / G. Russo / P. Hoelzmann / R. Herrmann / R. Nielbock / K. F. Hillgruber / A. Kotula / N. Lüdemann/ J. Lehmann / T. Terberger, Neandertaler und Symbole. Neue Forschungen zur Einhornhöhle im Harz, Ldkr. Göttingen. Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte 90, 2021, 11 –42.