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The migration of Late Pleistocene reindeer: isotopic evidence from northern Europe

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Abstract

Questions concerning the timing and direction of reindeer herd movements in northern Europe during the Late Pleistocene are examined with methods for isotopic proveniencing to study the faunal remains of reindeer from archaeological sites in northern Germany. Late Upper Paleolithic and Late Paleolithic reindeer hunters in this region belong to the Hamburgian and Ahrensburgian culture groups that exploited these herds between ca. 14,950 and 14,050 cal b2k and between ca. 12,800 and 11,400 cal b2k, respectively. The direction and timing of herd migration would have played a major role in the livelihood of these people and the success of their adaptation to this changing environment across southern Scandinavia and the North European Plain. Results of the isotopic analysis suggest that the herds for the most part moved east-west through this region, probably wintering in the east.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Klaus Bokelmann, Claus von Carnap-Bornheim, Berit Eriksen, Sönke Hartz, Charlotte Hegge, Ulrich Schmölcke, the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology, the Foundation of State Museums of Schleswig-Holstein, Schloss Gottorf, James Burton, David Dettman, Paul Fullagar, the National Science Foundation of the United States, and the Humboldt Foundation of Germany. We would also like to thank all of the individuals who assisted in the collection of the baseline bioavailable samples in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and elsewhere. Particular appreciation goes out to Ola Magnell and Bengt Nordqvist in Sweden and Dick Mol of the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam for their help with the samples. We should also thank the two anonymous referees of the manuscript who delayed publication but also offered useful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Archaeological Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    T. Douglas Price

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, 14623, USA

    David Meiggs

  3. Zentrum für Baltische und Skandinavische Archäologie, Stiftung Schleswig-Holsteinische Landesmuseen Schloss Gottorf, 24837, Schleswig, Germany

    Mara-Julia Weber

  4. Vassar College, Campus Box 411, Poughkeepsie, NY, 12604, USA

    Anne Pike-Tay

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  1. T. Douglas Price
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Correspondence to T. Douglas Price.

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Price, T.D., Meiggs, D., Weber, MJ. et al. The migration of Late Pleistocene reindeer: isotopic evidence from northern Europe. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 9, 371–394 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-015-0290-z

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