The social role of hoarding over the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in southern Scandinavia
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2023-03-28

Mathias Bjørnevad-Ahlqvist (Copenhagen University), Clara Fischer Stephansen (Velje Museums), & Lasse Sørensen (National Museum of Denmark)

This paper presents new results on the continuity and discontinuity of hoarding over the 
Mesolithic-Neolithic transition of Southern Scandinavia as a means to explore the processes 
and mechanisms behind this period of cultural change. Using a multi-scalar approach, we put 
forward a new framework focusing on the important psychosocial role hoarding and ritual 
practices, in general, may have played within the various forms of interaction that lie behind 
the significant cultural transformations that occurred between c. 4500-3500 BC. We interpret 
our analytical results using an interdisciplinary framework built around the combination of 
practice theory, migration theories, communities of practice, sociology, symbolic 
anthropology, and cognitive science of religion. Based on the observable hoarding 
developments, we hypothesize that the hoarding practice seen in the Southern Scandinavian 
Funnel Beaker culture is a product of complex cultural transmission processes involving 
influences from incoming immigrating Neolithic groups and pre-existing local Mesolithic 
practices. Rather than considering the hoarding a simple by-product of other societal changes, 
we further hypothesize that these hybridized practices played a key role in negotiating 
interactions, societal tensions and cultural identity throughout an extended Neolithization 
process in Southern Scandinavia.