Marc De Bie

PLEISTOCENE–HOLOCENE TRANSITION IN BENELUX

In Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg), considerable progress in Late Glacial and Early Postglacial archaeological and environmental research has been made during the last decade. A substantial part of this paper discusses new evidence on the chronology of the industries which occupied the southern part of Benelux. Dating the occupations from the sandy North is still problematic. Long after the glacial maximum, during which the area remained uninhabited, the south of Benelux was visited by Magdalenian hunter-gatherers, while Hamburgian settlements were present in the North. The significance of the continental ‘Creswellian’ is debated. During the Allerod Interstadial, Federmesser groups occupied most of the area, abandoning it with the onset of the Younger Dryas. The presence of the Ahrensburgian during that stadial may have been punctuated. New elements were introduced, and were maintained during the development of the Preboreal Early Mesolithic, which eventually colonised the entire region. Throughout this sequence, changes in material culture and related subsistence activities are evident. In view of the major problems concerning the quality of the chrono-ecological data, this paper can only suggest provisional explanations in terms of human reactions to changing environmental conditions.