Krogsbølle, a new Hamburgian site in eastern Denmark

Although known through sporadic surface finds and trial excavations for some time, the first intensive excavations at the site of Krogsbølle on the eastern Danish island of Lolland were conducted in 2012 as part of a collaborative project between Aarhus University, the Museum Lolland-Falster, the Danish Natural History Museum, the Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology Schleswig and the Danish National Museum. This chapter reports on the results of this first excavation, which has yielded a small but tool-rich inventory belonging to the Havelte phase of the Hamburgian culture. The bulk of the material derives from a small area characterized by an unusually complex stratigraphic sequence that preserves various cryogenic features. The main find-bearing layer is dated
preliminarily to 14,300 ± 1100 years ago by optically stimulated luminescence. Coring in the vicinity of the nearby wetland Svingelen has additionally revealed well-preserved Late Glacial sediments dating all the way back to the Meiendorf/Bølling/GI-1e. Subsequent open-profile sampling has not
only yielded abundant organic material for pollen and macrofossil analysis, but also the virtually intact skeleton of a seagull (Larus sp.). Preliminary investigations of the lithic material and the local palaeoenvironmental
sequence provide new insights into the life-ways of these late Hamburgian foragers at the north-eastern edge of their range.