Pioneers of northern Scandinavia

The pioneer dispersal of human groups after the last Ice Age into northern Europe has been the focus of an extensive debate in archaeology.

Due to poor bone preservation in northern Scandinavia, human remains are not well preserved and traditional archaeology cannot answer the questions of how, when and by whom this pioneer colonization took place.

Breakthroughs in archaeogenetic research have recently opened up for the possibilities to investigate the human past in new ways previously not available to archaeology.

We propose to undertake a ground-breaking project to resolve this question by identifying how and when the pioneering humans colonized northern Scandinavia, through a palaeogenomic approach on lake sediments.

More specifically, we will (1) Identify the chronology and origins of the first humans in northern Scandinavia, (2) Recreate the past environments that the first humans experienced, (3) Reconstruct the colonization chronology of animals, primarily those associated with human activity, such as brown bear, reindeer, moose, beaver, dog and Arctic char, and (4) Use the reconstructed past shore environments and the geological and paleoenvironmental transitions to explain and understand the pioneer settlements and their adaptive strategies otherwise not identifiable.This project will go beyond the present state of the art by addressing scientific questions using novel ancient DNA methods to track the pioneer demographic history in northern Scandinavia.