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Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair

Ancient organic remains are essential for the reconstruction of past human lifeways and environments but are only preserved under particular conditions. Recent findings indicate that such conditions are becoming rarer and that archaeological sites with previously good preservation, are deteriorating...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Boethius, Adam, Kjällquist, Mathilda, Magnell, Ola, Apel, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7390309/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32726345
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236105
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author Boethius, Adam
Kjällquist, Mathilda
Magnell, Ola
Apel, Jan
author_facet Boethius, Adam
Kjällquist, Mathilda
Magnell, Ola
Apel, Jan
author_sort Boethius, Adam
collection PubMed
description Ancient organic remains are essential for the reconstruction of past human lifeways and environments but are only preserved under particular conditions. Recent findings indicate that such conditions are becoming rarer and that archaeological sites with previously good preservation, are deteriorating. To investigate this, we returned to the well-known Swedish Mesolithic site Ageröd I. Here we present the result of the re-excavation and the osteological analyses of the bone remains from the 1940s, 1970s and 2019 excavation campaigns of the site, to document and quantify changes in bone preservation and relate them to variations in soil conditions and on-site topography. The results indicate that the bone material has suffered from accelerated deterioration during the last 75 years. This has led to heavily degraded remains in some areas and complete destruction in others. We conclude that while Ageröd can still be considered an important site, it has lost much of the properties that made it unique. If no actions are taken to secure its future preservation, the site will soon lose the organic remains that before modern encroachment and climate change had been preserved for 9000 years. Finally, because Ageröd has not been subjected to more or heavier encroachment than most other archaeological sites, our results also raise questions of the state of organic preservation in other areas and call for a broad examination of our most vulnerable hidden archaeological remains.
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spelling pubmed-73903092020-08-05 Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair Boethius, Adam Kjällquist, Mathilda Magnell, Ola Apel, Jan PLoS One Research Article Ancient organic remains are essential for the reconstruction of past human lifeways and environments but are only preserved under particular conditions. Recent findings indicate that such conditions are becoming rarer and that archaeological sites with previously good preservation, are deteriorating. To investigate this, we returned to the well-known Swedish Mesolithic site Ageröd I. Here we present the result of the re-excavation and the osteological analyses of the bone remains from the 1940s, 1970s and 2019 excavation campaigns of the site, to document and quantify changes in bone preservation and relate them to variations in soil conditions and on-site topography. The results indicate that the bone material has suffered from accelerated deterioration during the last 75 years. This has led to heavily degraded remains in some areas and complete destruction in others. We conclude that while Ageröd can still be considered an important site, it has lost much of the properties that made it unique. If no actions are taken to secure its future preservation, the site will soon lose the organic remains that before modern encroachment and climate change had been preserved for 9000 years. Finally, because Ageröd has not been subjected to more or heavier encroachment than most other archaeological sites, our results also raise questions of the state of organic preservation in other areas and call for a broad examination of our most vulnerable hidden archaeological remains. Public Library of Science 2020-07-29 /pmc/articles/PMC7390309/ /pubmed/32726345 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236105 Text en © 2020 Boethius et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Boethius, Adam
Kjällquist, Mathilda
Magnell, Ola
Apel, Jan
Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title_full Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title_fullStr Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title_full_unstemmed Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title_short Human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: Accelerated bone deterioration at Ageröd, a revisited Scandinavian Mesolithic key-site in despair
title_sort human encroachment, climate change and the loss of our archaeological organic cultural heritage: accelerated bone deterioration at ageröd, a revisited scandinavian mesolithic key-site in despair
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7390309/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32726345
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236105
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