At https://phys.org/news/2024-09-archaeologists-neolithic-scandinavians-skin-boats.html … the Scandinavian Pitted Ware Culture may have used skin boats to travel, to fish, to trade, and to hunt seals and fish etc. They were not farmers but had pottery decorated with pit marks made into the soft clay before it was fired. They are dated 3500-2300BC and were hunter gatherers with some similarities with Inuit on the opposite side of the Atlantic. They also engaged in long distance voyages it would seem, and arrived, it is thought, from an eastern location – or perhaps, across the Arctic Ocean. They are known to have sailed the Baltic Sea and as far as the Kattegat.
At https://www.phys.org/news/2024-09-clovis-people-great-lakes-annually.html …. Clovis People used the Great Lakes we are told. However, it later emerges that clovis points were traded from Kentucky. This occurred by way of interaction, over the years, with other semi nomadic people, with the Great Lakes people spending winter way to the south, where they met and traded with other peoples. In other words, the iconic clovis points were made elsewhere. Hence, the actual Clovis people themselves may have been smaller in number than the distribution of those points across North America in which they are found. Makes sense.
The press release, or post, appears to be poorly researched. The author of the piece claims glaciers were distributed across a large part of the northern world. Including Michigan, where the Great Lakes people spent winter. He implies the Great Lakes were inhospitable for humans – yet they built a seasonal camp and clearly spent months at a time at the location. Winter time was spent at Belson in SW Michigan, it is thought. However, prior to the Younger Dryas the earth enjoyed two warm periods, separated by a shortish Older Dryas period. This is known, in Europe, as the Bolling-Alleroed warm period. The latter phase is when the Clovis point users lived – but the technology disappeared with the coming of the Younger Dryas. A return of cold weather conditions. The art of making long blades with a central rib died out – or people were dispersed from the chert [a form of flint] outcrops in Kentucky. One has to wonder who suffered the most – the people living for half the year in the Great Lakes region, or the clovis point makers in Kentucky. Human dispersal as a result of catastrophe, even if only climatic, seems to be a fact of ancient life. When humans were in much smaller numbers.
At https://www.casemateuk.com/blog/2023/09/27/mapping-out-viking-place-names-in-east-anglia-looking-for-patterns-of-settlement-and-migration/ … is written by David Boulton, author of ‘Viking Migration and Settlement in East Anglia‘ – and the subject of the post. The Viking settlement is mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle – but in a brief and succint one liner sort of way. Detail is sparse – hence a controversy. For a long time it was thought most of the Viking Settlement coincided with the presence of the Great Army – and the subsequent truce and dividing up of land between themselves and the Wessex kingdom. This was as late of the 9th century AD. The author disputes this, saying Viking groups set down roots long before that. Apprently the book is the first deep study of the subject – using GIS generated maps. This allowed the author to engage with local landscape settings of the place names, exploring their underlying terrain, geology, and soil characteristics – even the proximity to water resources.