Ahrensburg culture
The Ahrensburg culture (ca 11200 BC– ca 9500 BC was a late Upper Paleolithic culture during the Younger Dryas, the last spell of cold at the end of the Weichsel glaciation. The culture is named after village of Ahrensburg, 25 km northeast of Hamburg in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein where wooded arrow shafts and clubs have been excavated. There archaeologists have found three important settlements:
- Meiendorf from the Elder Dryas, ca 10000 BC– ca 9700 BC, with finds from the so-called Hamburg culture.
- Stellmoor with a lower layer from the Hamburg culture, and an upper layer from the Ahrensburg culture.
- Borneck which also belongs to the Ahrensburg culture.
The settlements were in proximity to the rim of the Ice, and the landscape was tundra with bushy arctic white birch and rowan. The most important prey was the wild reindeer, and the hunters ranged areas as large as 100 000 km².
Stellmoor was a seasonal settlement inhabited primarily during October, and bones from 650 reindeer have been found there. The hunting tool was bow and arrow. From Stellmoor there are also well-preserved arrow shafts of pine intended for the culture's characteristic skaftunge arrowheads of flintstone. A number of intact reindeer skeletons, with arrowheads in the chest, has been found, and they were probably sacrifices to higher powers. At the settlements, archaeologists have found circles of stone, which probably were the foundations of hide teepees.
The relationship between the Ahrensburg and the Hamburg cultures is uncertain. The settlement at Jels in Sønderjylland, probably belongs to the Hamburg culture. Another culture of reindeer hunters, the Bromme culture, is known from several settlements in Denmark and from the settlement at Segebro, near Malmö, Sweden's oldest known settlement.
The Bromme culture belongs to the warmer Alleröd Age between the Older and the Younger Dryas, ca 9700 BC-9000 BC, with white birch forests. The Bromme culture and the Ahrensburg culture are so similar that they are sometimes subsumed under the label Lyngby culture.