First farmers in Northern Europe

Abstract

The change in subsistence from hunting, gathering and fishing to farming was a key transition in European prehistory. One of the regions with the richest archaeological record for this momentous shift is the western Baltic area which includes southern Scandinavia and northwesternmost Germany (hereafter simply southern Scandinavia). Hunter-gatherer societies associated with the Ertebølle culture flourished here for about 1000 years after the Neolithic was introduced in Central Europe. Despite centuries of exchange between farmers and foragers, the latter appear unaffected by the Neolithic communities and their lifestyle. The substantial delay in the introduction of agriculture in southern Scandinavia raises the question of whether different mechanisms were involved in the transition than seen elsewhere in Europe. Perhaps the native foragers played a bigger role compared to the demic diffusion observed in the rest of Europe. This notion was supported by several aspects of cultural continuity around the Neolithic transition, and for a long time, local adaption of agriculture, pottery styles, lithics, and house forms was the mainstream view (Andersen, 2004, 2011; Fischer, 2002; Johansen, 2006; Nielsen, 1985, 1994; Price, 1985; Price and Gebauer, 2005).