Early Neolithic flint extraction in south-western Sweden: transregional practices on a local scale

Abstract

Recent studies relate the introduction of Early Neolithic flint mining practices to the migration and rapid expansion of agricultural groups from north-western continental Europe into present-day Britain and southern Scandinavia. Here, the authors critically analyse this hypothesis, using a case study from south-western Sweden to demonstrate how transregional processes played out locally with their own dynamics, c . 4000 BC. They conclude that migration and population change only partly can explain what happened during the centuries immediately before and after 4000 BC. Local variation in human-material relationships also needs to be considered.