university of copenhagen The Transformation of Neolithic Societies An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rd Millennium BC Iversen, Rune Publication date: 2015 Document version Other version Citation for published version (APA): Iversen, R. (2015). The Transformation of Neolithic Societies: An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rd Millennium BC. Højbjerg: Jysk Arkaeologisk Selskab. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter, Vol.. 88 Download date: 18. aug.. 2020
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u n i ve r s i t y o f co pe n h ag e n
The Transformation of Neolithic Societies
An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rd Millennium BC
Iversen, Rune
Publication date:2015
Document versionOther version
Citation for published version (APA):Iversen, R. (2015). The Transformation of Neolithic Societies: An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rdMillennium BC. Højbjerg: Jysk Arkaeologisk Selskab. Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter, Vol.. 88
A review of Danish research history ...............................................................................................................................................................................13
Setting the scene – Europe in the 3rd millennium BC ...............................................................................................................................15
The chronology of the Middle Neolithic .....................................................................................................................................................................19 Chronological issues ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 19 From Funnel Beakers to Corded Ware – transitory shift or lengthy overlap?................................................................................................... 21 The Middle Neolithic chronology – revised ............................................................................................................................................................................ 24
The transition to the Late Neolithic ................................................................................................................................................................................. 27
The end of the Neolithic ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 29
4. The late Funnel Beaker period and beyond – entering the late Middle Neolithic ...................................................................................................................................................... 33
Material transformations – late Middle Neolithic artefacts ................................................................................................................ 33 Heavy thick-butted "int axes ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 33 Medium-bladed and thin-bladed "int axes.............................................................................................................................................................................. 38 Adzes ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 39 Chisels ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 41 Tanged arrowheads .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 42 Stone artefacts .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 44 Battle-axes ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 46 Pottery ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Amber and bone ornaments ............................................................................................................................................................................................................... 62 Conclusion: Material continuity ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 63
Structural changes? Settlements, graves and hoards .................................................................................................................................. 65 Settlement pattern and subsistence economy ......................................................................................................................................................................... 65 Late Middle Neolithic burial customs ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 73 Hoards and deposition practices ..................................................................................................................................................................................................... 82
Change, continuity and contact networks during the late Middle Neolithic ................................................................ 88 Change versus continuity .................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 88 Late Middle Neolithic contact networks .................................................................................................................................................................................... 92
5. Reintroduction of metal and the Late Neolithic ................................................................................................................ 97
Late Neolithic artefacts: New weapons, "int techniques and raw materials ................................................................. 97 Flint daggers ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 97 Other pressure-"aked objects ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................102 Flint axes and chisels .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................105 Shaft-hole axes ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................106 Metal objects of the 3rd millennium BC ...................................................................................................................................................................................108 Late Neolithic pottery ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 111 Ornaments and clothing .....................................................................................................................................................................................................................115 Conclusion: New forms and old patterns ...............................................................................................................................................................................116
Late Neolithic settlements, graves and hoards ................................................................................................................................................. 117 Settlements, houses and subsistence economic practice ...............................................................................................................................................117 Burial practices of the Late Neolithic and Earliest Bronze Age – continuity and variation ...................................................................123 Hoards and depositions during the Late Neolithic and Earliest Bronze Age .................................................................................................130
6
Change, continuity and contact networks during the Late Neolithic ...................................................................................133 Change and continuity .........................................................................................................................................................................................................................133 Late Neolithic contact networks – Bell Beaker and Ún tician in"uences ..........................................................................................................136 Conclusion: Change, continuity and contact networks during the Late Neolithic ......................................................................................137
6. The concept of culture and the 3rd millennium BC ...................................................................................................139
How to de$ne and understand culture? ...................................................................................................................................................................139 A sense of belonging – ethnicity, identity and culture ....................................................................................................................................................140
The bigger picture ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................142
Living cultures? The cultural heterogeneity of southern Scandinavia in the 3rd millennium BC .....145 Great traditions, cultural complexes and cultural groups in the Neolithic ......................................................................................................145
The cultural development in eastern Denmark during the 3rd millennium BC ......................................................147 Cultural diversity ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................147 After the funnel beakers ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................150 Towards a new cultural homogeneity .......................................................................................................................................................................................153
7. The transformation of Neolithic societies ...................................................................................................................................155
From Neolithic big-men to Bronze Age chieftains ............................................................................................................................155 Modes of social organisation ...........................................................................................................................................................................................................155 Big-men and small chiefs – modes of social organisation in the 3rd millennium BC ................................................................................159
An eastern Danish perspective on the 3rd millennium BC................................................................................................................171
Dansk resumé ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................176
The research presented in this volume represents the outcome of a PhD project con-ducted at the SAXO Institute, Department of Archaeology, University of Copenhagen. Thanks to a grant from The Danish Council of Independent Research | Humanities (FKK), I was able to begin my PhD programme in September 2010. I wish to thank staff at the Institute and the Department for welcoming me and for providing a good working atmosphere. Special thanks go to my two supervisors, Professor Klavs Rands-borg, University of Copenhagen, and Professor Lars Larsson, Lund University, for their commitment, fruitful discussions and perceptive comments. Furthermore, I would like to thank Professor Mike Parker Pearson, University College London, Professor Mats Larsson, Linnaeus University and Associate Professor Mikkel Sørensen, University of Copenhagen, for their interest and commitment in assessing my dissertation and for their recommendation of a monographic publication.
I also wish to thank the Jutland Archaeological Society and publications editor Jesper Laursen for accepting my manuscript and David Earle Robinson and Anne Bloch for revising the English. I am particularly grateful to Lutz Klassen, Head of Research and Investigation at Museum Østjylland for reading my manuscript and providing very detailed, insightful and useful comments. In addition, I wish to express my gratitude to Dronning Margrethe II’s Arkæologiske Fond, Farumgaard-Fonden and Lillian og Dan Finks
Fond for $nancial support which enabled production of this book. Last but not least I would like to thank my family and friends for their support,
useful advice and friendly distraction during the writing of my dissertation.
Preface
9
1. Introduction
This book is about the 3rd millennium BC in southern
Scandinavia. The following investigations focus on
eastern Denmark, but also include the neighbouring
regions of western Denmark, southern Sweden, north-
ern Germany and beyond. In this context, eastern
Denmark is de#ned as the islands of Zealand, Møn,
Falster and Lolland (#g. 1.1). Even though Bornholm
is the easternmost part of present-day Denmark, the
island was strongly associated with southern Sweden
in Neolithic times and therefore did not follow the
same developments as Zealand and adjacent islands.
The 3rd millennium BC was a period of great
change in most parts of northern and western Eur-
ope, where pan-European phenomena such as the
Corded Ware and Bell Beaker complexes changed
Neo lithic life and prepared the way for the appear-
ance of Bronze Age societies. The great era of mega-
lithic architecture came to an end as the production
and exchange of gold, copper and bronze objects be-
came the driving force in the development of Copper
and Bronze Age societies. This development also had
a great in%uence on southern Scandinavia, where
the #rst Neolithic culture, the Funnel Beaker culture
(FBC), came to an end and a period of great cultural
heterogeneity began.
In southern Scandinavia, the beginning of the
Neolithic is de#ned by the presence of domesticated
crops and the appearance of the Funnel Beaker culture
around 4000 BC; it remained the sole archaeological
culture in the region throughout the 4th millennium
BC. The eastern parts of Denmark held a dominant
position within the Funnel Beaker culture as a core
area for the construction of megalithic tombs.
From around 3000 BC we see signi#cant changes in
the material culture, including new types of pottery,
subsistence economic practices and burial customs.
These changes are generally related to the appearance
of new Middle Neolithic ‘cultures’, including the Pitted
Ware culture (PWC), the Single Grave culture (SGC)
and the Swedish-Norwegian Battle-Axe culture (BAC).
As regards the subsequent Late Neolithic, reference is
often made to an overall Late Neolithic culture as well
as a Danish variant of the international Bell Beaker
culture (BB), sometimes termed the Danish Beaker
culture.
The rich collection of archaeologically de#ned
cultures of the 3rd millennium BC has, to a major
extent, resulted in the adoption of a ‘culture-centric’
approach. Scholars have therefore generally concen-
trated on individual cultures and associated aspects,
such as culture-speci#c burial customs, settlement
patterns, pottery styles or classic culture-speci#c
sites. I do not consider such an approach mistaken,
but standing alone it becomes inadequate if we wish
to understand the wider social and cultural develop-
ments of the later Neolithic.
As Single Grave communities spread across the Jut-
land peninsula and succeeded the Funnel Beaker cul-
ture around 2800 BC, eastern Denmark experienced a
diversi#ed and diffuse cultural development. It was
not until a few centuries later (around 2600 BC) that
Single Grave and Battle-Axe culture objects became
accepted in eastern Denmark. From this time onwards
we see a mix of Single Grave, Battle-Axe and Pitted
Ware culture elements, together with continued use
of the old Funnel Beaker megalithic tombs. This het-
erogeneous cultural expression is usually referred
to as ‘the Single Grave culture of the Danish islands’
as de#ned in the 1930s (Becker 1936) – a term and a
concept that has not been seriously challenged since.
The aim of this book is to present a new and co-
herent understanding of cultural and social develop-
ments evident from the late Funnel Beaker period to
the emerging Bronze Age. By analysing the entire 3rd
millennium BC, I wish to move beyond the restrictions
implied in the study of individual cultural groups and
instead explain the decisive changes that took place in
eastern Denmark as part of one long transformation
process. On the threshold to the 2nd millennium BC,
the Neolithic had come to an end and a new stage of
social organisation had begun with the emergence of
incipient Bronze Age societies.
In explaining the signi#cant process of socio-
cultural transformation, three questions are of central
importance:
10 I N T R O D U C T I O N
The #rst relates to a c. 200 year period of archae-
ological ‘invisibility’ between c. 2800-2600 BC. What
happened in eastern Denmark between the end of the
Funnel Beaker culture and the appearance of elements
of the Single Grave culture?
The second is: How do we explain the culturally
complex and ‘diffuse’ #nal Middle Neolithic period,
c. 2600 to 2350 BC, from which the Late Neolithic
emerged?
The third and #nal question relates to the signif-
icance of metal and how contacts with metal-using
societies affected the social structure of Neolithic com-
munities in eastern Denmark and the rest of southern
Scandinavia at the end of the 3rd millennium BC.
These questions are addressed in the subsequent
six chapters:
The next chapter, chapter 2, provides a background
for the study of the 3rd millennium BC, beginning
with a general review of the research history from a
Danish perspective. This is followed by a brief over-
view of European developments in order to present
the overall cultural-historical setting within which
eastern Danish developments took place.
Chapter 3 deals with the chronology. According to
the accepted south Scandinavian chronology, the 3rd
millennium BC spans parts of the Middle Neolithic (c.
3300-2350 BC) and the Late Neolithic (c. 2350-1700 BC).
In this chapter attention is focussed on the duration of
the late Funnel Beaker culture and the potential chron-
ological overlap with other Middle Neolithic cultural
groups. There is then a discussion of the ending of the
Neolithic and the transition to the Bronze Age, argued
to have taken place around 2000 BC. All dates are
given in calendar years BC unless otherwise stated.
Chapters 4 and 5 present and analyse the archae-
ological record for eastern Denmark as evident from
publications, catalogues, excavation reports and the
national register ‘Sites and Monuments’ (Fund og For-
tidsminder) administered by the Danish Agency for
Culture. The register contains records of c. 185,000
cultural historical sites from all over Denmark, includ-
ing submerged localities. The aim here is to look for
the Ka'egat
the West Bal-c Sea
Bornholm
Scania
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Falster
Møn
Rügen
Stevns
Zealand
Læsø
Anholt
Lolland
Funen
Langeland
Fehmarn
Djursland
Samsø
Himmerland
Vendsyssel
Schleswig-Holstein
Als
Jutland
Thy
the Lim
3ord
the Grea
t Be
lt
the O
resu
nd
Fig. 1.1. Southern Scandinavia and the northernmost part of Germany. Eastern Denmark is highlighted. Geographical map: The research programme ‘Settlement and Landscape’.
11
evidence of change and continuity throughout the 3rd
millennium BC. Chapter 4 deals with the later Middle
Neolithic (c. 3000-2350 BC), while chapter 5 deals with
the Late Neolithic and the transition to the Earliest
Bronze Age (c. 2350-1950 BC). The two chapters are
organised similarly and together they form the main
body of this book. Both chapters begin with an exam-
ination of the relevant artefacts, their chronological
signi#cance and their distribution. This is followed by
analyses of settlements, subsistence economy, burials
and depositions. Both chapters conclude with reviews
of the changes/continuity in material culture and a
reconstruction of the exchange networks that either
promoted change or secured continuous development.
Chapter 6 addresses the concept of culture and be-
gins with some theoretical considerations on how to
de#ne and understand culture and cultural relation-
ships in an archaeological perspective. As already
indicated, the concept of culture is highly relevant
when studying the 3rd millennium BC. It is a topic
that requires careful consideration in order to un-
derstand and explain the decisive changes that took
place within this millennium. In addition, notions
such as ethnicity and identity are examined. By the
application of the linguistic concepts of pidginisation
and creolisation, this chapter explains the cultural
heterogeneity of eastern Denmark and the cultural
changes that took place there.
After having considered the process of cultural
change, chapter 7 presents an interpretation of the
social developments that led to the end of Neo lithic
societies and the introduction of new hierarchical
modes of social organisation that heralded the emerg-
ing Bronze Age. The chapter begins with an outline
of how to approach social organisation in early socie-
ties, inspired by ethnographic studies. Attention then
turns to a reconstruction of the basic organisation
of south Scandinavian Neolithic communities and
how these changed in accordance with European de-
velopments and increased contacts with metal-using
societies. Chapter 7, concludes with a summarising
synthesis of the socio-cultural developments in east-
ern Denmark during the 3rd millennium BC.
Following the main text are two appendices and
a catalogue, which facilitate reading of the text and
present the collected archaeological data used in the
analyses. Appendix 1 comprises a selection of previ-
ously published chronological schemes referred to
in the text. Appendix 2 presents a list of radiocarbon
dates from late Funnel Beaker contexts and serves
as documentation for the chronological discussion
in chapter 3. The catalogue is divided into ten sep-
arate sections (A-J) and includes all eastern Danish
settlements, graves and depositions recorded in the
