Rekonstruktion av paleomiljön för området kring den Mesolitiska stenåldersboplatsen vid Sammakko, Norrbotten

Summary, in English

A large number of quartz fragments from knapping and
burnt bone, discovered during reconnaissance (Norrbottens
Museum) of forest-cleared areas north of the village
Sammakko, c. 40 km SE of Gällivare, have been interpreted
to indicate a short-term used dwelling site. Th e
site, located c. 100 meters north of the Linaälven River
and at the edge of an almost overgrown pond, underwent
archaeological preliminary investigation in the summer
of 2019. Collected material of burnt bone and charcoal
shows that the settlement was used c. 8800 - 8900 years
ago by Mesolithic hunters. Th e present report includes
a landscape analysis and vegetation reconstruction, the
latter carried out through pollen analysis of sedimentary
layers from two nearby lake basins, of the area into which
these early Holocene hunters migrated. Th e settlement is
located in a so-called Veikimorain area, a landscape with
high and broad plateaus with depressions in between.
Th is landscape was formed during the fi nal phase of a
previous glaciation, a landscape morphology that was
only very slightly aff ected by the most recent glaciation
Dating of the lowest sediment layers in the lake basins
(silt, clay) shows that current lake basins became completely
ice-free c. 9200 years ago while surrounding higher-
situated areas became ice-free at least 600 years earlier
- stagnant ice residues lingered in the terrain lows while
the gradually ice-free landscape in higher locations was
occupied by a vegetation of the Arctic heathland type.
When the hunter-gatherer settlement at Sammakko was
utilized, the landscape had been completely ice-free for
c. 300–400 years and it constituted an inland settlement
at c. 20 km distance from the coastline of the Littorina
Sea further east. From the pollen analyzes we can see that
even a little earlier the vegetation had changed from arctic
heath to an open birch forest (Betula) with elements of
pine (Pinus) and in more humid locations there was alder
(Alnus). Dwarf shrubs, including dwarf birch (Betula
nana), willow (Salix) and juniper (Juniperus) were common
and so were various herbs, grasses and sedges in the
semi-open fi elds. Only after c. 8500 BP does the forest
become a more closed birch-pine forest.