Kullaberg and the Dawn of Maritime Lifeways: Tracing the Northern Pioneers (PI Adam Boethius) investigates how the earliest foragers in Scandinavia made the transition from terrestrial hunting to coastal living, the "maritime shift" that allowed human groups to disperse northwards as the ice sheets retreated. The Swedish West Coast was central to that process, yet remains poorly investigated in terms of settlement dynamics, the chronology of maritime adaptation, and the ecological constraints that shaped subsistence. The project focuses on Kullaberg in north-western Scania, one of the first land areas to emerge from the ice around 17,000 years ago and a 6 km² micro-region with an exceptional concentration of caves, rock shelters, open-air sites, lakes and peatlands. Its objectives are to establish the timing and character of pioneer settlement, reconstruct survival and subsistence strategies, identify when and where maritime adaptation becomes archaeologically visible, and examine how early coastal communities responded to climatic and environmental change.