The expansion of agrarian societies towards the north – new evidence for agriculture during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Southern Scandinavia

Abstract

Radiocarbon dates on new evidence of agriculture in Southern Scandinavia document the introduction of domesticated animals and cereal cultivation during the period 4000–3700 cal BC. The speed of the expansion was so rapid that smaller groups of pioneering farmers from Central Europe must have been involved in this process. These farmers cleared the forest and settled on inland sites. For reasons of poor preservation conditions for organic finds, bioarchaeological evidence from these inland sites is rare. However, the small amounts of available evidence clearly points to a dominating agrarian subsistence supplemented by hunting and fishing. Furthermore, the distribution of archaeological stray finds, such as pointed butted flint axes, is in certain cases located around easy accessible inland flint mines, where pioneering farmers settled on easily-workable arable soils.Evidence from contemporaneous coastal and lake shore sites show, on the other hand, a slow and gradual process of change towards agrarian subsistence, thus supporting the availability model. Our results support the theory of cultural dualism, assuming the migration of smaller groups of farmers from Central Europe. The transition towards an agrarian way of life probably happened during a complex and continuous process of migration, integration and gradual assimilation between pioneering farmers and local hunter–gatherers.