The Pitted Ware culture on Djursland in the Neolithic world. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Transformation of Neolithic Societies: An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rd Millennium BC
Jutland Archaeological Society Publications, 2015
Summary This book is about socio-cultural developments in eastern Denmark (Zealand, Møn, Falster and Lolland) during the 3rd millennium BC, corresponding to the later Middle Neolithic and the Late Neolithic periods. Following the end of the Funnel Beaker culture, in the early 3rd millennium BC, eastern Denmark entered a culturally heterogeneous period displaying a mixture of various cultural elements usually ascribed to the so-called ‘Single Grave culture of the Danish islands’. This situation lasted until the end of the millennium and the beginning of the Late Neolithic around 2350 BC. Research on the 3rd millennium BC has mainly centred on one of the many archaeologically defined cultures such as the Funnel Beaker culture, the Pitted Ware culture, the Single Grave culture, the Battle-Axe culture, the Late Neolithic culture or the Bell Beaker culture. In order to understand the culturally complex period in eastern Denmark at this time, I go beyond these defined cultural groups and instead explain the decisive changes that took place here as part of one extended transformation process. The aim is thereby to advance a new and coherent understanding of cultural and social developments as evident from the late Funnel Beaker period to the emergence of incipient Bronze Age societies at the onset of the 2nd millennium BC. Traditionally, the Single Grave culture has been thought to have succeeded the Funnel Beaker culture around 2800 BC. However, material associated with the Single Grave culture did not appear in eastern Denmark before about 2600 BC. On the basis of a revision of new and existing radiocarbon dates from late Funnel Beaker contexts, I propose that the Funnel Beaker culture lasted until about 2600 BC in the eastern part of southern Scandinavia. Consequently, the late Funnel Beaker culture coexisted with the Single Grave and Pitted Ware cultures for more than 200 years. Based on an analysis of the archaeological record from the entire 3rd millennium BC, including artefacts, settlements, graves and hoards, I have shown that a high degree of continuity existed throughout the millennium. Nevertheless, some significant changes coincided with the widespread use of flint daggers in the Late Neolithic. I explain the culturally diffuse period that emerged following the end of the Funnel Beaker culture in terms of a cultural creolisation process by which Single Grave, Battle-Axe and Pitted Ware cultural elements were adopted into a setting that basically consisted of a continuation of Funnel Beaker norms and traditions. This process arose from the combination of a strong local identity rooted in eastern Denmark’s position as a Funnel Beaker and megalithic heartland, together with new influences from the Single Grave culture. As a consequence, the term ‘Single Grave culture of the Danish islands’ is abandoned. At the end of the culturally diversified Middle Neolithic, new material and cultural trends influenced southern Scandinavia, thereby creating, on a long-term basis, a new and far more homogeneous cultural expression as known from the Early Bronze Age. As eastern Denmark gradually became more and more involved in the European Bronze Age world, the old Funnel Beaker norms slowly vanished, and as contacts increased with the Únětice culture at the onset of the 2nd millennium BC, the flow of metal into Denmark reached levels that permitted the development of incipient hierarchies. The old kinship-based tribal Funnel Beaker communities focused on communal tombs and ancestor worship slowly changed and the way was laid open for the emergence of hierarchical Bronze Age societies.
The Pitted Ware culture chronology on Djursland
Lutz Klassen (ed.), The Pitted Ware Culture on Djursland. Uncovering the supra-regional importance and contacts of a South-Scandinavian landscape in the Middle Neolithic. East Jutland Museum Publications vol. 5, 2020
A Review of the Early Late Neolithic Period in Denmark: Practice, Identity and Connectivity
Journal of Neolithic Archaeology, 2005
The focus of this study is the early part of the Late Neolithic Period in Denmark with particular emphasis on impact from the European Bell Beaker culture in the fi nal centuries of the third millennium BC. The history of research is briefl y reviewed and the published evidence of domestic and ritual practices and of material expressions are discussed in some detail. The underlying intention is to provide a preliminary conclusion useable as a framework for describing future research potentials and aims. Flint daggers and various other things and materials enriched with symbolic meanings, culture and knowledge were exchanged over northern central Europe and Scandinavia, but were diff erentially received locally. The specifi c cultural and social situation in northern Jutland-associated with a marked concentration of Beaker elements-can best be understood as dependent on a series of internal conditions such as rich sources of high quality fl int as well as on interaction with a wider Late Neolithic realm in southern Scandinavia and with late Bell Beaker and affi liated groups in western Europe. A scenario of competing social identities is presented in which strategies were closely coupled to appropriation of new kinds of material culture and in some measure also new cultural and social practices. External impulses were continuously translated into a local cultural language. Future research into Beakers may benefi t from an interpretive approach that combines analyses of archaeological data with social theories about the role of material culture in social practices, identifi cation strategies and cross-cultural connectivity.
Beyond the Neolithic transition - the ‘de-Neolithisation’ of South Scandinavia
NW Europe in Transition The Early Neolithic in Britain and South Sweden, 2013
In South Scandinavia, the Funnel Beaker culture is synonymous with the emergence of Neolithic societies (c 4000 BC), the construction of megalithic monuments and agricultural lifestyle. After c 1300 years of existence the Funnel Beaker culture ceased and a culturally blurred period began. In the south-western parts of the Jutland Peninsula, the Single Grave culture emerged (c 2850 BC) expressing a high degree of cultural uniformity. In Eastern Denmark this uniformity was absent and instead the material culture shows a mixture of late Funnel Beaker, Pitted Ware and Single Grave culture elements. The question is whether the end of the Funnel Beaker culture in Eastern Denmark marks a period of decline and fragmentation or one of continuity and incorporation of new cultural elements and subsistence strategies. In particular the revival of hunter-fisher-gatherer strategies applied by the Pitted Ware culture represents a different economic focus than that held by the Funnel Beaker culture. The renewed focus on hunter-fisher-gatherer strategies, 1000 years after the introduction of agriculture, challenges the prevalent understanding of the dynamics behind the Neolithisation.
Creolization processes in the later south Scandinavian Neolithic
2016
is paper approaches the cultural heterogeneity of the later South Scandinavian Neolithic. South Scandinavia experienced a very uneven development in the course of the 3rd millennium BC, with a variety of archaeologically de ned cultures. is situation has resulted in the application of a “culture-centred” approach by which individual “cultures” have been thoroughly analysed but without the achievement of a coherent understanding of the cultural heterogeneity of the period. is paper questions the application of dogmatic cultural labelling and proposes the use of creolization theory to explain the blurred cultural situation that followed the Funnel Beaker era in eastern Denmark and lasted until the onset of the Late Neolithic when a new period of incipient cultural homogeneity began. Department of Archaeology, University of Copenhagen, SAXO Institute, Karen Blixens Vej 4, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. runeiversen@hum.ku.dk
Continuity and Change The development of Neolithic societies in central East Jutland, Denmark Catalogue of finds, 2019
The following upload is the first 38 pages of a catalogue covering Neolithic finds from a 640 sq. km large area of central East Jutland, Denmark. The catalogue is 870 pages long, and at the end of the upload, you will find a link through which you can access and freely download the complete catalogue. The East Jutland project is a settlement archaeological project that I initiated in the late 1970’es. I published an outline of the project and its theoretical background in 1982 (Settlement Systems of Early Agricultural Societies in East Jutland, Denmark: A Regional Study of Change. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 1, 197-236. After that, the project grounded to a halt due to lack of time and not least a lack of a suitable technology to handle the huge amounts of accumulating data in a satisfactory way. After stepping back from my position at the University of Aarhus In 2006, I resumed the project. I then had the time to collect data and the knowledge to handle them within the frames of modern information technology. The data presented in the catalogue I collected between 2007 and 2017, and I am currently working on a volume that contains analyses and syntheses of the data. Meanwhile I have chosen to publish the catalogue to make the comprehensive set of data including material from several unpublished excavations available.