The Rødhals kitchen midden – marine adaptations at the end of the Mesolithic world. (October 2021) - Fischer, Anders
Highlights: A shell midden on an extraordinarily tiny stretch of land far out in the sea. Deep-water angling, open-sea fowling, sealing, and whaling. Inshore resources include shellfish, eels and flatfish. Remarkable frequencies of haddock and great auk for Danish Mesolithic and Neolithic. Food and strategic raw materials occasionally imported from across the open sea. Abstract: The Rødhals kitchen midden was located on a tiny stretch of land 18 km from the nearest major landmass in present-day Denmark. It dates to the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, roughly 4300 to 3700 cal BC. Its inhabitants practiced a remarkably broad-scale exploitation of marine resources spanning from the collecting of mollusks on the sea-shore, over open-sea fowling and deep-water angling to the killing of small whales. The sparse traces of terrestrial diet are mainly from cattle, sheep, pig and cereals dating to a late stage of the habitation. Strategic raw materials of bone and antler from large forest game were only occasionally imported from across the sea. In terms of artefact types and production modes, the material culture of Rødhals represents the ultimate stage of the local fisher-hunter-gatherer Ertebølle Culture and an initial stage of the farming-based Funnel Beaker Culture. The extreme marine adaptation seen at this site may reflect a historically extraordinary situation, where an indigenous population of foragers had lost major parts of its territory to immigrant farmers.