Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2017
We review the evidence for the earliest agriculture in Finland. The claims are all based on pollen analysis. Some claims go back to the Neolithic period. We contest these claims critically and argue that the ‘early cereal-type’ pollen grains may in fact come from large-grained wild grasses, and cannot be taken as clear evidence for cultivation in the absence of other lines of evidence. Cultivation of cereals in Finland may have started as late as the start of the Iron Age in c. 500 BC.
Nous réexaminons les preuves des débuts de l'agriculture en Finlande. Toutes les assertions se fondent sur des analyses polliniques; quelques-unes remontent jusqu’à la période néolithique. Nous évaluons de façon critique ces affirmations et avançons que les grains de pollen de type ‘céréales anciennes’ pourraient très bien provenir d'herbes sauvages à gros grains, et, en l'absence d'autres preuves, ne sauront pas servir comme preuves évidentes pour la culture de céréales. Il se peut que la culture des céréales en Finlande n'ait commencé qu'au début de l'Âge du Fer vers 500 BC. Translation by Isabelle Gerges.
In diesem Beitrag werden die frühesten Belege für Landwirtschaft in Finnland untersucht, die sämtlich auf Pollenanalysen beruhen und teilweise sogar Datierungen bis ins Neolithikum beanspruchen. Diese Ansätze werden kritisch untersucht und es wird vermutet, dass diese Pollenkörner ‘früher Cerealientypen’ eigentlich von langkörnigen Wildgräsern stammen und bei Abwesenheit anderer Belege nicht als klarer Beweis einer Kultivierung angesehen werden können. Die Kultivierung von Getreide wird erst zu einem späten Zeitpunkt, dem Beginn der Eisenzeit um etwa 500 v. Chr., begonnen haben. Translation by Heiner Schwarzberg.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.