Mesolithic Complexity in Scandinavia
The European Mesolithic (roughly the period from 8000 B.C. to 2700 B.C.) testifies to a continuity in human culture from the times of the Ice Age. This continuity, however, was based on continuous adjustment to environmental changes following the end of the last glacial period (about 12,500 years ago). Three broad subdivisions within the northern Mesolithic are known in Scandinavia. The Maglemose Period (7500–5700 B.C.) was a time of seasonal exploitation of rivers and lakes, combined with terrestrial hunting and foraging. The sites from the Kongemose Period (5700–4600 B.C.) are mainly on the Baltic Sea coasts, along bays and near lagoons, where the people exploited both marine and terrestrial resources. Many Kongemose sites are somewhat larger than Maglemose ones. The Ertebølle Period (4600–3200 B.C.) was the culmination of Mesolithic culture in southern Scandinavia.
By the Ertebølle Period, the Scandinavians were occupying coastal settlements year-round and subsisting off a very wide range of food sources. These included forest game and waterfowl, shellfish, sea mammals, and both shallow-water and deepwater fish. There were smaller, seasonal coastal sites, too, for specific activities such as deepwater fishing, sealing, or hunting of migratory birds. One such site, the Aggersund site in Denmark, was occupied for short periods of time in the autumn, when the inhabitants collected oysters and hunted some game, especially migratory swans. Ertebølle technology was far more elaborate than that of its Mesolithic predecessors; a wide variety of antler, bone, and wood tools for specialized purposes such as fowling and sea-mammal hunting were developed, including dugout canoes up to ten meters long.
With sedentary settlement comes evidence of greater social complexity in the use of cemeteries for burials and changes in burial practices. The trend toward more sedentary settlement, the cemeteries, and the occasional social differentiation revealed by elaborate burials are all reflections of an intensified use of resources among these relatively affluent hunter-gatherers of 3000 B.C. Mesolithic societies intensified the food quest by exploiting many more marine species, making productive use of migratory waterfowl and their breeding grounds, and collecting shellfish in enormous numbers. This intensification is also reflected in a much more elaborate and diverse technology, more exchange of goods and materials between neighbors, greater variety in settlement types, and a slowly rising population throughout southern Scandinavia. These phenomena may, in part, be a reflection of rising sea levels throughout the Mesolithic that flooded many cherished territories. There are signs, too, of regional variations in artifact forms and styles, indicative of cultural differences between people living in well-delineated territories and competing for resources.
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