The book brings together the latest research on the Neolithic of northern Europe. In the study of the distant human past, certain events and periods have come to represent decisive passages from one human state to another. From a global perspective, the characteristic feature of the last ten thousand years is that people in different parts of the world, and at different points in time, started to grow plants and domesticate animals. The rise and dissemination of agriculture were crucial factors for the continued existence of humankind on earth. The incipient agriculture is often regarded as the very beginning of human culture, as it has traditionally been perceived in western historiography, that is, as control over nature and the cultivation of intellectual abilities. As a result of the increasing national and international interest in the northern European Neolithic (4000-2000 BC), combined with large-scale archaeological excavations which helped to nuance and modify the picture of the period, senior researchers and research students formed a Neolithic group in 2010. The Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University served as the base, but the group also included collaborators from Linnaeus University and Södertörn University, and from the Southern Contract Archaeology Division of the National Heritage Board in Lund and Sydsvensk Arkeologi in Malmö and Kristianstad. Meetings and excursions in the following two years resulted in the holding of an international conference in Lund in May 2013 entitled 'What's New in the Neolithic'. Invitations to this conference were sent to two dozen prominent Neolithic scholars from northern and central Europe.
Author(s): Kristian Brink, Susan Hydén, Kristina Jennbert, Lars Larsson, Deborah Olausson (eds.)
Series: Acta Archaeologica Lundensia, Series in 8°, 65
Publisher: Lund University
Year: 2015
Language: English
Pages: 254
Preface 7
I. PERSPECTIVES ON PEOPLE, IDENTITY AND PRACTICE
Paleodemography of maritime hunter-gatherers and the quest for forager baseline demography / Torbjörn Ahlström 11
Neolithic depositional practices at Dösemarken – a discussion of categorization / Åsa Berggren 21
New insights into early farming practice and diet from stable isotope analysis of crop assemblages / Amy Bogaard 33
Growth and decline?: Population dynamics of Funnel Beaker societies in the 4th millennium BC / Martin Hinz 43
The cultural encounters of neolithization processes: A discussion of different ways to understand plurality / Anders Högberg 52
Creolization processes in the later south Scandinavian Neolithic: An approach to cultural heterogeneity / Rune Iversen 58
Cultural identity?: The Middle Neolithic Pitted Ware complex in southern Scandinavia / Kristina Jennbert 66
Agency, creolization and the transformation of tradition in the constitution of the earliest Neolithic in southern Scandinavia / Mats Larsson 75
Animal husbandry and social identities during the Neolithic in southern Sweden / Ola Magnell 80
The Neolithic house as a procurement, production and consumption unit: The case of the Late Neolithic at Çatalhöyük / Arkadiusz Marciniak 89
Burial in the Swedish-Norwegian Battle Axe Culture: questioning the myth of homogeneity / Deborah Olausson 98
A tale of the tall: A short report on stature in Late Neolithic–Early Bronze Age southern Scandinavia / Anna Tornberg 107
II. PERSPECTIVES ON MONUMENTS
Frydenlund – Early Neolithic settlement and 'barkaer' structures in the Sarup area / Niels H. Andersen 117
Megaliths and timber structures in northeast Scania, Sweden / Anders Edring 128
The Hamremoen enclosure in southeastern Norway: An exotic glimpse into the process of Neolithization / Håkon Glørstad and Steinar Solheim 139
Occupy time!: The construction of design and monuments in Tiefstich central Europe / Johannes Müller 153
Transforming place and architecture through cremation: Cremation traditions at the third millennium BC monument complex at Forteviot, central Scotland / Gordon Noble and Kenneth Brophy 164
The proper way of dwelling at the Early Neolithic gathering site of Almhov in Scania, Sweden / Elisabeth Rudebeck and Stella Macheridis 173
The diversity of settings: Ritual and social aspects of tradition and innovation in megalithic landscapes / Almut Schülke 188
News from Frälsegården: Aspects of Neolithic burial practices / Karl-Göran Sjögren 200
III. PERSPECTIVES ON MATERIAL CULTURE
An ABC of lithic arrowheads: A case study from southeastern France / Kevan Edinborough, Enrico R. Crema, Tim Kerig and Stephen Shennan 213
The scent of sandstone – exploring a TRB material / Susan Hydén 224
Fragmentation during the Neolithic: Transformation and enchainment from a south Swedish perspective / Lars Larsson 233
Michelsberg and Oxie in contact next to the Baltic Sea / Doris Mischka, Georg Roth and Katrin Struckmeyer 241
