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an adaptation to prevailing conditions? Much more work needs to be done on the late-glacial industries before this question can be answered, but some observations can be made at this point. Late-glacial environments are becoming better understood. The last millennium or so was characterized by very cold conditions (the so-called Dryas III, ca. 11,000–10,000 b.p.). Preceding this was a warmer interstadial period (the late-glacial interstadial, sometimes divided into the Bølling and Allerød interstadials, ca. 13,000–11,000 b.p.) in the North European Plain. Before 13,000 b.p. came the major period of last-glacial cold (Barton, Roberts, and Roe 1991, xii).

Microlithization varies with this in what is potentially a most interesting way. Later Upper Paleolithic industries in southern Europe showed a trend toward microliths (Gamble 1986, 220–221), which increased in the Azilian around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary (Straus 1985). Remarkably, southern france for a time saw a chronological overlap between (1) groups hunting reindeer with Magdalenian technology and (2) groups hunting red deer with Azilian technology (Straus 1996). In northern Europe, the Hamburgian dates to the earlier part of the late-glacial interstadial period and is typified by the heavy, tanged points that were used to kill reindeer (Fischer 1991, 1996; Holm and Rieck 1992). Microlithization began in the second part of the late-glacial interstadial period (Rozoy 1989, 25). Cultural entities of this period in the North European Plain are variously termed Federmesser, Tjongerian, Arch Backed Piece, and so forth (Fischer 1991; Gob 1991; Schild 1976; Houtsma et al. 1996; Newell and Constandse-Westermann 1996). Large, tanged points continued in the northern edge of occupation, in the Brommian of Denmark (Fischer 1991), although some Federmesser elements are also known (Holm 1996). Ahrensburgian tanged points from the final cold spell in the Younger Dryas have been found across much of the North European Plain, again associated with reindeer hunting (Schild 1976; Fischer 1991). At the end of the Younger Dryas final Paleolithic industries continued until 9600 b.p. in poland, by which time the site of Friesack in Germany had already “gone Mesolithic,” although this phenomenon cannot yet be linked to ecological factors because no faunal remains survive (Schild 1996). This pattern could be consistent with (1) specialized reindeer hunting using tanged points and (2) more generalized hunting using smaller armatures, moving north and south as climate and resources fluctuated. More work is, however, needed on late-glacial industries and resources before this supposition can be substantiated.

Final Remarks

This essay has tried to show why the Mesolithic period in Europe is no longer regarded as a cultural hiatus or a retrogressive backwater. Variability has been stressed; in some areas hunter-gatherer economies were apparently a viable alternative to farming for centuries or longer. Thus, when farming spread across Europe, groups of people who lived at the Portuguese shell middens and the Iron Gates hunter-fisher sites continued to occupy them for centuries although surrounded by farmers; by contrast, the boundary between hunter-gatherers and farmers in southern Scandinavia and northern Germany was more or less stable for over a millennium.

It is heartening that many of the changes in views discussed here have come about not as theoretical changes divorced from the archaeological material but as the direct consequence of methodological and interpretational advances on the part of Mesolithic scholars all across Europe. An optimistic view of the future of Mesolithic studies thus stresses the importance of continued work: excavation, interpretation, reinterpretation, synthesis. It is from this process that a greater understanding will come in the years ahead.

Peter Rowley-Conwy