Late Glacial and Earliest Postglacial Database Project

PD Dr. Berit V. Eriksen, Dr. Sonja Grimm, Dr. Mara-Julia Weber

This project seeks to establish a reliable and searchable GIS database encompassing all data relevant to the archaeology and palaeo-ecology of the Late Glacial and Earliest Postglacial. This database will facilitate the organisation of future large-scale projects. Initial focus will be on the archives of archaeological sites in Schleswig-Holstein maintained by Ingo Clausen and the Archaeological State Agency Schleswig-Holstein, combining spatial and artefact data to allow researchers to investigate sites based on all known previous collection and fieldwork activities. Following this initial phase, the database will be expanded thematically to include information about the past environment with respect to topography, geology, hydrology, climate, flora, and fauna through close collaboration with colleagues working in archaeozoology, palynology, palaeobotany, and geology. Finally, the database will be expanded chronologically and geographically to include information for several phases of the Stone Age for Northwest Europe.

Work on this database has been significantly advanced during the last years in the context of the “Pioneers of the North” project of the CRC 1266. Katja Winkler, Benjamin Serbe, and Moiken Hinrichs have been helping to fill in the available information. However, the collection of the information about previous collection and fieldwork activities was far more complex than originally envisaged and, therefore, the initial phase is just about to be accomplished. Another issue was the connection to the archaeological atlas of Schleswig-Holstein that provided us as collaborators of the Archaeological State Agency Schleswig-Holstein with the necessary geo-data for the sites. The database had been set up relatively similar to the one behind this atlas to make a connection possible but the atlas is a database for heritage protection management, whereas we wanted to create a research database. That is often not quite the same. Therefore, we look for new software solutions in the near future that allow us the connection to the geo-data from the Archaeological State Agency Schleswig-Holstein and the use of our database for research purposes.