Knutsson et al./Technology of Early Settlement, 7. Early Mesolithic Regional Mobility and Social Organization

This paper aims to enlighten aspects of how the later part of the Maglemosian society was organized at the large regional scale. The study area is defined as southern Scandinavia, from Blekinge to central Jutland and northern Germany and the time period is defined relatively as the Maglemosian phase 3/techno-group 3. This phase is dated to the centuries around 7000 BC, i.e. the transition from the Boreal to the Atlantic pollen zone in southern Scandinavia. In all, 24 lithic assemblages from excavated sites in this area are analysed and 12 of these have been studied in deep by the author. Two distinct lithic technologies and their distinct craft processes are studied: the production of microliths and the lithic blade production. The study concludes that the conical core pressure blade concept has a clearly eastern distribution in southern Scandinavia. The western Baltic region was part of the pressure blade community of practice. The study points to a proposition that the conical core pressure blade concept might have arrived with people coming from the north (Scandinavia) into an earlier Maglemosian tradition.Middle Mesolithic Blade Technology in Sweden, c. 8th Millennium BC.