Yxors liv, människors landskap : En studie av kulturlandskap och samhälle i Mellansveriges senneolitikum

Sammanfattning: The thesis deals with the social situation of Late Neolithic society, as it can be studied in the contextual formation and the accumulation of wealth in the Late Neolithic landscape of Central Sweden (c. 2350-1700 cal. BC). I claim that Scandinavian hammer axes of this period (in Scandinavian archaeology traditionally referred to as ‘simple shaft-hole axes’) exhibit traits of context-dependent differences and morphologically identifiable value relativity. Hence, they are capable of disclosing a landscape of contexts, action spheres and dispersal of value when mapped. The studies show that there is an unequal distribution of wealth in the disguised cultural landscape of the stray finds, and the question is how, and in what context, this inequality should be understood. The value perspective is used as an aid in a discussion about center and periphery and accumulation of wealth in the cultural landscape and society of Late Neolithic Scandinavia, and a proposition as to the structures of power and contact in such a society. A wider European outlook seems to provide the hammer axes, as well as Scandinavian Late Neolithic society as a whole, with a Bronze Age context of pan-European contacts, possibly based upon earlier, Corded-Ware networks of interaction.