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Only in the last 20 years have German research institutes and heritage agencies turned their attention to the investigation of the settlements that were inundated by rapid sea-level rise during the Holocene. Over 142 sites have been recorded so far, the majority on the Baltic coastline, and mostly of Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic date. Underwater excavations on the Baltic coast of sites such as Timmendorf-Nordmole, Neustadt and Strande demonstrate the presence of large and well-preserved assemblages of stone, antler and wooden artefacts and other cultural features, comparable to the better-known underwater settlements of Denmark. Research within the framework of the SINCOS project has led not only to the discovery of numerous Stone Age settlements but also to a high-resolution reconstruction of the changes in coastal palaeogeography associated with the Littorina transgression. It has also raised the profile of the submerged Stone Age as a significant feature of the cultural heritage and demonstrated the value of and the need for multi-disciplinary collaboration. Fewer finds have been recovered on the North Sea coast, and this reflects the different environmental history of marine transgression, the greater thickness of marine sediments masking the prehistoric land surface and the greater technical challenges required to access it. Most finds here have been disturbed, a notable exception being the Late Neolithic votive deposit of an aurochs at Hamburger Hallig. The situation is also influenced by the legal and structural requirements imposed on research and the protection of sites by the relevant authorities in the various federal states: Mecklenburg-West Pomerania (Baltic Sea), Schleswig-Holstein (North Sea and Baltic Sea) and Lower Saxony (North Sea).

Pottery produced by mobile hunter-gatherer-fisher groups in the northeast European forest zone is among the earliest in Europe. Absolute chronologies, however, are still subject to debate due to a general lack of reliable contextual information. Direct radiocarbon dating of carbonized surface residues (“foodcrusts”) on pots can help to address this problem, as it dates the use of the pottery. If a pot was used to cook fish or other aquatic species, however, carbon in the crust may have been depleted in 14C compared to carbon in terrestrial foods and thus appear older than it really is (i.e. showing a “freshwater reservoir effect,” or FRE). A connected problem, therefore, is the importance of aquatic resources in the subsistence economy, and whether pots were used to process aquatic food. To build better chronologies from foodcrust dates, we need to determine which 14C results are more or less likely to be subject to FRE, i.e. to distinguish crusts derived mainly from aquatic ingredients from those composed mainly of terrestrial foods. Integrating laboratory analyses with relative chronologies based on typology and stratigraphy can help to assess the extent of FRE in foodcrust dates. This article reports new 14C and stable isotope measurements on foodcrusts from six Stone Age sites in central and northern European Russia, and one in southeastern Estonia. Most of these 14C results are not obviously influenced by FRE, but the isotopic data suggest an increasing use of aquatic products over the course of the 6th and 5th millennia cal BC.

The emergence of pottery among Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies of Eurasia constitutes one of the major open questions in Old World prehistory. Located halfway between the earliest Late Glacial cores of pottery production in East Asia, and Eastern Europe with forager ceramic starting around 6000 cal BC, the Urals and West Siberia are a key region in various scenarios currently under discussion. A lack of reliable absolute dates has been hindering an in-depth understanding of the temporal and spatial scales of the initial spread of the ceramic innovation. A Russian-German dating programme has now created a more reliable chronology of the early pottery phase, based on 28 AMS dates from across the study region. Taking freshwater reservoir effects into account, we can show that the earliest reliable evidence for pottery stems from the West Siberian forest steppes and Urals foothills, dating to the end of the 7th millennium cal BC. Over the following centuries, the innovation spread rapidly north into the taiga. Here, the early pottery horizon coincides with a unique set of innovations and intensification in the settlement system and the socio-economic sphere, including the appropriation of vast previously barely settled regions, the emergence of complex and even fortified settlements, and of ritual mounds. Pilot isotopic analyses of pottery charred crusts indicate diverse functions of the early vessels that were apparently not restricted to the processing of fish. The emerging wider picture indicates a surprisingly late, largely concurrent appearance of pottery in hunter-gatherer groups over extensive areas along the southern fringes of the taiga to both sides of the Urals at the end of the 7th millennium cal BC which is apparently not connected to the earlier, Late Pleistocene ceramic traditions in Trans-Baikalia and further East. Possible links to the 8.2 ka climatic event, other underlying triggers as well as the detailed chronology of these developments are still poorly understood and require further archaeological, biomolecular and typological studies.

In the coastal waters of Kiel Bay near the village of Strande (district of Rendsburg-Eckernforde, Schleswig-Holstein) divers unexpectedly came across trunks of fallen oak trees at 6 m depth, which led to the discovery of a new submerged late Mesolithic site. During a preliminary excavation in 2012, research divers uncovered a well-preserved coastal site, consisting of several organic sediment and silt layers with a large number of stone artefacts and organic finds. Wooden objects, plant remains, bones of several marine and freshwater fish, marine and terrestrial mammals, water birds and fragmented human bones were found. Tree ring dating, radiocarbon dates of leister prongs and human bones, and the artefact inventory pinpoint the site to the pre-pottery Ertebolle phase (5450–4750 cal BC). Sites of this time period are of particular interest as they are still rare in the south-western Baltic Sea area, where only very few sites have been examined in detail. To evaluate the extent of the organic sediment and silt layers and their potential for preserving more finds, a survey project was executed in summer 2014 over a wider area around the excavation trenches. This established a high potential for the recovery of additional finds and structures in the surrounding area, and further investigations at Strande are planned.

Shallow oval bowls used on the Baltic coast in the Mesolithic have been suggested as oil lamps, burning animal fat. Here researchers confirm the use of four coastal examples as lamps burning blubber—the fat of marine animals, while an inland example burned fat from terrestrial mammals or freshwater aquatics—perhaps eels. The authors use a combination of lipid biomarker and bulk and single-compound carbon isotope analysis to indicate the origin of the residues in these vessels.

In his comment, “The Patterns of Neolithization in the North Eurasian Forest Zone: A Comment on Hartz et al. (2012),” Y Kuzmin has raised a number of questions concerning the paper “Hunter-Gatherer Pottery and Charred Residue Dating: New Results on Early Ceramics in the North Eurasian Forest Zone” by Hartz et al. (2012). The following remarks aim to clarify some of these issues.

Starch granules are being successfully recovered from an increasing range of artefacts. Here we present the recovery of starches from carbonised ceramic ‘foodcrusts’ from late Mesolithic–early Neolithic residues at the site of Neustadt in northern Germany. A method for investigating background loading of residues with contaminant starches is proposed by comparing interior ‘foodcrusts’ versus exterior ‘sooting’, for the purposes of eliminating samples with insignificant quantities of grains from subsequent identification procedures. The classification of starches to plant taxon is traditionally achieved by manual observations and measurement of nominal and ratio morphological variables. Here, we present a method for the automated classification of granules, using software developed in-house. The results show that when multiple granules are considered, the species selected as modern reference examples can be classified to high levels of specificity. When applied to the archaeological samples we show that wild plant resources persist in importance across the transition to agriculture, with high proportions of granule forms consistent with acorn (Quercus sp.) occurring in all samples. Hazelnut (Corylus avellana) types are less well-represented suggesting it was not an important food in the context of pottery, and may have been over-represented in the repertoire of hunter–gatherer resources. Cereals are not represented in any of the samples, supporting the notion that their adoption may have been a slow process, occurring more gradually than for other domesticated foods, or that they were not initially processed in ceramic vessels.

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was undertaken on collagen extracted from eel bone from six Mesolithic and Neolithic sites in northern Europe. The results were compared with data obtained on other archaeological fish remains and modern eel caught in fresh and brackish water and from the sea. The possibility of discriminating between freshwater, brackish and marine signals in archaeological eel bone is evaluated and the implications for archaeology discussed. Our data suggest that eel found at coastal Mesolithic and Neolithic sites have carbon isotope signals consistent with a marine origin with no evidence of freshwater residency. The sample of eel bone from one inland site is small but indicates carbon isotope values more consistent with freshwater residency or at least values intermediate between freshwater and marine carbon pools.

Two well-known archaeological sites, the peat bogs of Shigir and Gorbunovo (Middle Urals, Russia), have been radiocarbon dated (61 conventional and accelerator mass spectrometry [AMS] dates from various natural and artifact samples). For the first time, a detailed chronology of Early to Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic occupation for this region has been obtained, and a paleoenvironmental history reconstructed. Based on these results, we propose that the Mesolithic settlement of the Middle Urals region started in the early Holocene, at the same time as in central and eastern Europe. DOI: 10.2458/azu_js_rc.v54i3–4.16124

The pottery investigated in this study comes from late mesolithic inland sites next to rivers in Northern Germany. The first AMS 14C datings of food crusts from these sites showed surprisingly high ages, which could be caused by the hardwater effect. Modern samples from the rivers have ages of several hundred 14C years, and a modern food crust prepared from fish with a certain reservoir age shows the same age as the fish. Surprisingly, there was a large age difference between water samples and fish/mollusc shell from the same river. Associated archaeological samples of terrestrial and fluvial origin show age differences of several hundred and up to 3000 years. These high age differences are only to a limited extent transferred to the archaeological food crusts.

Recent studies of modern and ancient mtDNA in domesticated and wild cattle has indicated that members of the extinct Near Eastern aurochs population (Bos primigenius primigenius) were the wild progenitors of European domesticated cattle (Bos taurus) (Bollongino, R., Edwards, C.J., Burger, J., Alt, K.W., Bradley, D.G., 2006. Early history of European domestic cattle as revealed by ancient DNA. Biol. Lett. 2, 155–159; Edwards, C.J., Bollongino, R., Scheu, A., Chamberlain, A., Tresset, A., Vigne, J.-D., Baird, J.F., Larson, G., Ho, S.Y.W., Heupink, T.H., Shapiro, B., Freeman, A.R., Thomas, M.G., Arbogast, R.-M., Arndt, B., Bartosiewicz, L., Benecke, N., Budja, M., Chaix, L., Choyke, A.M., Coqueugniot, E., Dohle, H.-J., Goldner, H., Hartz, S., Helmer, D., Herzig, B., Hongo, H., Mashkour, M., Ozdogan, M., Pucher, E., Roth, G., Schade-Lindig, S., Schmolcke, U., Schulting, R.J., Stephan, E., Uerpmann, H.-P., Voros, I., Voytek, B., Bradley, D.G., Burger, J., 2007. Mitochondrial DNA analysis shows a Near Eastern origin for domestic cattle and no indication of comestication of European aurochs. Proc. Biol. Sci. 274, 1377–1385; Troy, C.S., MacHugh, D.E., Bailey, J.F., Magee, D.A., Lotfus, R.T., Cunningham, P., Chamberlain, A.T., Sykes, B.C., Bradley, D.G., 2001. Genetic evidence for near-Eastern origins of European cattle. Nature 410, 1088–1091). This observation is generally consistent with the observation of archaeo-zoologists, but there are exceptions. As cattle domestication is associated with size reduction, wild and domesticated individuals have usually been differentiated by measuring the size of the bones. But this criteria is complicated by a pronounced sexual dimorphism that makes it difficult to discriminate between male domestic cattle and female aurochs. In particular, several bone samples from the mainly terminal Mesolithic site Rosenhof LA 58 in northernmost Germany have provoked intense discussion because they are smaller than the minimum known size of Scandinavian female aurochs. Therefore, some scholars have argued that they represent the first and possibly locally domesticated bovines of the northern European Mesolithic. To clarify the status of the Rosenhof “cattle”, we determined the mtDNA-haplotype and sex of four of these presumed Mesolithic domesticates. We also analysed one early Neolithic sample and four Mesolithic robust and therefore morphologically definite wild aurochs from Rosenhof. For the purposes of comparison, we also determined the mtDNA haplotypes of seven samples from the adjacent Neolithic site of Wangels. The Neolithic samples from Wangels and Rosenhof revealed lineages that are typical of imported taurine cattle. In contrast, the four wild aurochs and the four presumed Mesolithic domesticates from Rosenhof yielded mtDNA sequences that are characteristic for European aurochs. Furthermore, all the proposed domestics from Rosenhof were female individuals while three out of four remains from Rosenhof's confirmed aurochs were males. As the four bones in question are too large to belong to female domesticates it is highly likely that they stem from wild female aurochs that were smaller than previously thought. Our data thus indicate that the beginning of cattle husbandry in Northern Germany did not predate, but is rather linked to the Neolithic transition. The single Neolithic Rosenhof domestic revealed an early radiocarbon date of 4000 ± 50 cal BC and marks the onset of the Neolithic in Northern Europe.

The extinct aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius) was a large type of cattle that ranged over almost the whole Eurasian continent. The aurochs is the wild progenitor of modern cattle, but it is unclear whether European aurochs contributed to this process. To provide new insights into the demographic history of aurochs and domestic cattle, we have generated high-confidence mitochondrial DNA sequences from 59 archaeological skeletal finds, which were attributed to wild European cattle populations based on their chronological date and/or morphology. All pre-Neolithic aurochs belonged to the previously designated P haplogroup, indicating that this represents the Late Glacial Central European signature. We also report one new and highly divergent haplotype in a Neolithic aurochs sample from Germany, which points to greater variability during the Pleistocene. Furthermore, the Neolithic and Bronze Age samples that were classified with confidence as European aurochs using morphological criteria all carry P haplotype mitochondrial DNA, suggesting continuity of Late Glacial and Early Holocene aurochs populations in Europe. Bayesian analysis indicates that recent population growth gives a significantly better fit to our data than a constant-sized population, an observation consistent with a postglacial expansion scenario, possibly from a single European refugial population. Previous work has shown that most ancient and modern European domestic cattle carry haplotypes previously designated T. This, in combination with our new finding of a T haplotype in a very Early Neolithic site in Syria, lends persuasive support to a scenario whereby gracile Near Eastern domestic populations, carrying predominantly T haplotypes, replaced P haplotype-carrying robust autochthonous aurochs populations in Europe, from the Early Neolithic onward. During the period of coexistence, it appears that domestic cattle were kept separate from wild aurochs and introgression was extremely rare.

The article presents the results of the SINCOS research group and the SINCOS II project bundle concerning the changes of the socio-economic system of the communities and societies living on the shore of the southwestern Baltic rim from the mid-Holocene Mesolithic and Neolithic period to the Early Medieval Age. The main focus is laid on the stage of the Littorina Transgression from 6000 to 2000 cal. BC, when the people living in the maritime zone between the Oder estuary and the Oldenburg Rift were facing a continuous shore displacement and a coastal decline, forcing them to move their settlements successively to pretect them from inundation. Because of the regionally differing intensity of the isostatic rebound to the isostatic uplift of northern Scandinavia, the coasts of the Bay of Mecklenburg were affected by this phenomenon to a much larger scale than those of the Arkona Basin and the Pomeranian Bay. Both areas were separated by the Darss Sill, which acted as a threshold between them. To be able to compare the environmental developments and human strategies employed in these regions, both of them were chosen as research Areas and investigated with the same methods. In both research areas all available Information about settlement remains originally positioned on the shore and indicating the relative sea level at their particular period of utilisation – and which thus can be used as sea level index points – were systematically recorded in the SINCOS database and formed the foundation for further research. A systematic survey based on geophysical measurements led to the discovery of numerous submerges sites in both research areas. Some of them offer exceptionalconditions for the preservation of organic material, so that artefacts as well as tools and multifaceted settlement refuse in large quantities could be recovered during surveys and excavations. Field work was restricted to sites from the Late Mesolithic until late Neolithic period between 6000 and 2000 cal. BC, because their remains should reflect the human reaction to the Littorina Transgression in a particular manner. Especially for Wismar Bay – forming one of the most important regional nuclei of research in the Bay of Mecklenburg – a large number of well preserved coastal sites was located, surveyed, and in some cases partly excavated.The material from these sites forms not only the basis for a detailed reconstruction of the chronological development from the Late Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic and the Settlement history for the period from 6000 until 4000 cal. BC, but also for the reconstruction of the intrusion of marine waters into Wismar Bay during the Littorina Transgression. Animal remains in combination with sediment conditions such as transgression contacts provide evidence of the appearance of the transgressing Baltic Sea at some distance from the present Island of Poel at about 6000 cal. BC. Some centuries later, both the fish species community and the frequency of the recorded species prove that the Littorina Transgression had reached this area. In the eastern research area – well investigated especially for the shores of the Bodden waters on Rügen Island – less dramatic changes of the environment meant that specialised sites with favourable general conditions related to their topographic setting were not abandoned as fast as in the western area. In fact, these sites stayed in occupation for centuries, so consequently a chrono-stratigraphic division of the archaeological material is only possible in a limited way.Definitely from the middle of the 5th millennium cal. BC, east as well as west of the Darss Sill the exploitation of the Baltic Sea – the hunting of seals and coastal fishery – became the economic basis of the human communities, and an important feature of the late Terminal Mesolithic Ertebølle Culture. Apparently this stayed true for a period of time, although around 4000 cal. BC the first livestock has been established in the entire southwestern Baltic Sea area. Investigations of aDNA samples have proved that the first cattle had Near Eastern ancestors, so that they must have been imported and did not result from the local domestication of autochthonous specimens. The same must be true for the contemporaneous first sheep and goats, whose ancestors are in any case of Near Eastern origin.During the last 4,000 years shoreline displacement and transgression east of the Darss Sill only affected the coastal settlements to a low degree, even though the sea level also rose here moderately during the Middle Ages as a consequence of the Late Subatlantic Transgression. This contrasts with the Bay of Mecklenburg, where the isostatic rebound together with the Late Subatlantic Transgression led during the Middle Ages to shoreline displacements and considerable erosions of settled and waterfront areas.Within the SINCOS research unit and the SINCOS II project bundle, methods and standards on interdisciplinary research on maritime and submerged prehistoric landscapes and sites could be developed and established for the southwestern Baltic area that may be transferred to other coastal areas affected by sea level changes and shoreline displacement.

During the past decade research into the German Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic has experienced an important revival. One clear sign of this renewed interest in the periods are the annual meetings of the “Arbeitsgruppe Mesolithikum” (Mesolithic Working Group) which have taken place every spring since 1992. At these meetings, which take place at changing venues, topical themes of Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic interest are presented by informal lectures and it is also possible to study regional collections (artifacts, raw materials) at first hand. Numerous contributions were subsequently published together in one volume (Conard and Kind (1998) Aktuelle Forschungen zum Mesolithikum/Current Mesolithic Research, Mo Vince, Tubingen). The present paper intends to complement that collection of papers with a synthesis of developments and perspectives and to present recent research highlights in the German Final Paleolithic and Mesolithic, together with a comprehensive bibliography, to a wider international audience.

Farming transformed societies globally. Yet, despite more than a century of research, there is little consensus on the speed or completeness of this fundamental change and, consequently, on its principal drivers. For Northern Europe, the debate has often centered on the rich archaeological record of the Western Baltic, but even here it is unclear how quickly or completely people abandoned wild terrestrial and marine resources after the introduction of domesticated plants and animals at ∼4000 calibrated years B.C. Ceramic containers are found ubiquitously on these sites and contain remarkably well-preserved lipids derived from the original use of the vessel. Reconstructing culinary practices from this ceramic record can contribute to longstanding debates concerning the origins of farming. Here we present data on the molecular and isotopic characteristics of lipids extracted from 133 ceramic vessels and 100 carbonized surface residues dating to immediately before and after the first evidence of domesticated animals and plants in the Western Baltic. The presence of specific lipid biomarkers, notably ω-( o -alkylphenyl)alkanoic acids, and the isotopic composition of individual n -alkanoic acids clearly show that a significant proportion (∼20%) of ceramic vessels with lipids preserved continued to be used for processing marine and freshwater resources across the transition to agriculture in this region. Although changes in pottery use are immediately evident, our data challenge the popular notions that economies were completely transformed with the arrival of farming and that Neolithic pottery was exclusively associated with produce from domesticated animals and plants.

The border between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic in Central Europe is traditionally defined on the basis of subsistence strategy. It is the development from hunter-gatherer groups in the forests of the early Holocene to the first farmers. The debate on the character of this process has been going on for over 100 years. This chapter presents results of new research on this subject, with an emphasis on northern Germany.

Au 5 e millenaire av. J.-C., le Sud-Ouest de la Baltique fait le pont entre les civilisations neolithiques pures, au sud et a l'est de l'Elbe, et la Scandinavie meridionale caracterisee encore par les chasseurs-cueilleurs. Des contacts reguliers avec les cultures paysannes existent deja a l'epoque de l'Ertebolle. En font la preuve: des haches perforees en bois de cerf (T-Axte), l'importation de haches en pierre perforees du Danube et d'autres haches tirees de roches allogenes ainsi que celle de haches en cuivre precoces du Sud-Est de l'Europe. La culture d'Ertebolle est repandue au Danemark et dans le Sud de la Suede jusque vers 4000/3900 calBC, apparemment sans avoir adopte d'elements agricoles. Le passage a l'economie de production correspond la-bas au debut de la culture des Vases a entonnoir. Par contre, la cote orientale du Holstein a fourni les premieres preuves de la pratique de l'agriculture et de l'elevage dans la culture d'Ertebolle entre 5000 et 4100 calBC, mais l'economie de subsistance repose encore essentiellement sur la chasse et la peche pratiquees a partir de grandes bases. L'etude de l'eventail des outils et des ceramiques revele que cette culture rayonne vers le nord-ouest (Jutland) et le nord-est (Seeland, Schonen). Entre 4100 et 4000 calBC, de nouvelles formes ceramiques apparaissent sous l'influence de cultures paysannes en expansion (Michelsberg ancien), tandis que la chasse et la cueillette perdent de leur importance vis-a-vis de l'agriculture et de l'elevage, et que les grandes stations cotieres sont abandonnees au profit de plus petites unites.

Artificial illumination is a fundamental human need. Burning wood and other materials usually in hearths and fireplaces extended daylight hours, whilst the use of flammable substances in torches offered light on the move. It is increasingly understood that pottery played a role in light production. In this study, we focus on ceramic oval bowls, made and used primarily by hunter-gatherer-fishers of the circum-Baltic over a c. 2000 year period beginning in the mid-6th millennium cal bc. Oval bowls commonly occur alongside larger (cooking) vessels. Their function as ‘oil lamps’ for illumination has been proposed on many occasions but only limited direct evidence has been secured to test this functional association. This study presents the results of molecular and isotopic analysis of preserved organic residues obtained from 115 oval bowls from 25 archaeological sites representing a wide range of environmental settings. Our findings confirm that the oval bowls of the circum-Baltic were used primarily for burning fats and oils, predominantly for the purposes of illumination. The fats derive from the tissues of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial organisms. Bulk isotope data of charred surface deposits show a consistently different pattern of use when oval bowls are compared to other pottery vessels within the same assemblage. It is suggested that hunter-gatherer-fishers around the 55th parallel commonly deployed material culture for artificial light production but the evidence is restricted to times and places where more durable technologies were employed, including the circum-Baltic.

Direct dating of the pottery is an important goal in archaeological research and many attempts have been made using radiocarbon. One important goal has been to date the earliest pottery in a region to assess the origin and dispersal of ceramic technology. Also with the increasing application of organic residue analysis to study pottery use, it has become important to combine residue data with direct dates on the artefact being investigated. In this study we have radiocarbon dated different organic materials associated with archaeological potsherds from three Ertebølle sites in Northern Germany. These are hunter/fisher/gatherer sites located in coastal or riverine setting and correspond to some of the earliest pottery bearing sites in this region. We have chosen to radiocarbon date different fractions on the pottery including “foodcrusts” (charred deposits from the inner surface of sherds), “soot” (charred deposits from the outer side of sherds), plant remains from inside the clay matrix, and lipids extracted from the ceramic matrix. All of these are potentially problematic media for AMS dating: ‘Foodcrusts’ and absorbed lipids can appear too old because of the marine or freshwater reservoir effect, such as when aquatic products have been prepared in the pottery. Soot can derive from old wood that was used for the hearth fire, or from (potentially aquatic) food that boiled over. Plant remains may have been present in the clay for a long time before manufacture of the pottery. Post-depositional contamination with organic carbon, such as humic acids, may also be problematic. We present these data with radiocarbon datings of contemporaneous terrestrial and aquatic samples to find out the true age of the pottery and estimate the reservoir age. Lipid analysis and bulk carbon and nitrogen stable isotope measurements are used to give additional information about the former contents of the pottery and the risk of reservoir effects.

This article discusses 18 accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates from the peat bog sites Sakhtysh 2a, Ozerki 5, and Ozerki 17 in the Upper Volga region. The aim is to contribute to a better understanding of the emergence and dispersal of early ceramic traditions in northern Eurasia and their connection to the Baltic. With 1 exception, all dates were obtained from charred residue adhering to the sherd. A possible reservoir effect was tested on 1 piece of pottery from Sakhtysh 2a by taking 1 sample from charred residue, and another sample from plant fiber remains. Although a reservoir effect was able to be ruled out in this particular case, 4 other dates from Sakhtysh 2a and Ozerki 5 seem too old on typological grounds and might have been affected by freshwater reservoir effects. Considering all other reliable dates, the Early Neolithic Upper Volga culture, and with it the adoption of ceramics, in the forest zone of European Russia started around 6000 cal BC. DOI: 10.2458/azu_js_rc.v54i3–4.16162

Local reservoir ages are often estimated from the difference between the radiocarbon ages of aquatic material and associated terrestrial samples for which no reservoir effect is expected. Frequently, the selected aquatic material consists of bivalve shells that are typically well preserved in the archaeological record. For instance, large shell middens attest to the importance of mussel consumption at both coastal and inland sites. However, different physiological mechanisms associated with tissue and shell growth may result in differences in reservoir effects between the surviving component (shell) and the component relevant to dietary reservoir effects in consumers (tissue). The current study examines bivalve tissue-shell age differences both from freshwater and marine contexts close to archaeological sites where human consumption of mollusks has been attested. Results exhibited significant 14C age differences between bivalve tissue and shell in a freshwater context. In a marine context, no significant bivalve tissue-shell age differences were observed. The results also showed that riverine and lacustrine shells show large and variable freshwater reservoir effects. The results have important implications for establishing local reservoir effects especially in a freshwater environment. For good a priori knowledge of expected 14C differences in organic and inorganic water, carbon is thus necessary. Furthermore, the high variability in freshwater shell 14C ages implies the need for representative sampling from the archaeological record.