Morphogenesis of the Sarine canyon in the Plateau Molasse, Switzerland: new data from an archaeological site

The 50 to 100 metre deep canyon of the Sarine River that develops north of the prealpine front in the Molasse Plateau is classically attributed to postglacial erosion. However, the discovery of a Mesolithic archaeological site (~ 8600 years cal. BP), located at the bottom of the gorge five metres above the actual river bed, has evident implications for the canyons morphogenesis. This new chronological datum indicates that most of the canyon was already formed 8600 years ago, and that only five metres of Molasse have eroded since that time. This implies a dramatically high erosion rate during Late Glacial to early Holocene times 0.9 to 1.48 cm/ year) and, consequently, a very low erosion rate since the Atlantic period approximately 0.06 cm/ year). These new archaeological and geological findings offer exciting perspectives for Quaternary research

New directional archeomagnetic data of burned cave sediments from Switzerland and geomagnetic field variations in Central Europe

This paper presents new directional archeomagnetic data from nine Meso-/Neolithic fireplaces, sampled in a cave shelter, at Arconciel, in western Switzerland. Rock magnetic measurements indicate a homogenous magnetic mineralogy in all fireplaces, with magnetite as the main magnetic carrier. The remanent magnetization is stable and generally shows one characteristic directional component. Nine new directions, which were obtained from Arconciel, are combined with 356 other archeomagnetic data from a circular area with a radius of 700km around this site, to obtain a penalized least square spline fit for the past 9000yr. We found in general good agreement with other local compilations, such as the Balkan curve, the regional SCHA.DIF.8k model and with lake sediments from UK, Fennoscandia and Switzerland. Nevertheless, a time lag of several centuries is observed for a declination maximum between the archeomagnetic spline fit and the other European data records around 5900BC. This time lag is also observed in the Swiss lake sediment record; therefore we interpret this shift as a local feature of the Earth's magnetic fiel

A simulation of the Neolithic transition in Western Eurasia

Farming and herding were introduced to Europe from the Near East and Anatolia; there are, however, considerable arguments about the mechanisms of this transition. Were it people who moved and outplaced the indigenous hunter- gatherer groups or admixed with them? Or was it just material and information that moved-the Neolithic Package-consisting of domesticated plants and animals and the knowledge of its use? The latter process is commonly referred to as cultural diffusion and the former as demic diffusion. Despite continuous and partly combined efforts by archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists, paleontologists and geneticists a final resolution of the debate has not yet been reached. In the present contribution we interpret results from the Global Land Use and technological Evolution Simulator (GLUES), a mathematical model for regional sociocultural development embedded in the western Eurasian geoenvironmental context during the Holocene. We demonstrate that the model is able to realistically hindcast the expansion speed and the inhomogeneous space-time evolution of the transition to agropastoralism in Europe. GLUES, in contrast to models that do not resolve endogenous sociocultural dynamics, also describes and explains how and why the Neolithic advanced in stages. In the model analysis, we uncouple the mechanisms of migration and information exchange. We find that (1) an indigenous form of agropastoralism could well have arisen in certain Mediterranean landscapes, but not in Northern and Central Europe, where it depended on imported technology and material, (2) both demic diffusion by migration or cultural diffusion by trade may explain the western European transition equally well, (3) [...]Comment: Accepted Author Manuscript version accepted for publication in Journal of Archaeological Science. A definitive version will be subsequently published in the Journal of Archaological Scienc