Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 1996. / BLL : DX192053. Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Art, Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, 1996. Includes bibliographical references. Print copy also available.

This essay will discuss where the people who built the passage graves and the first farmers at the Falbygden area in Sweden came from. That the first farmers built the passage graves is today a given fact, but how did the Neolithic transition take form in Scandinavia? Two theories have been put forward over the past century, that they learned through cultural diffusion, or that the first farmers were immigrants. Recent DNA- and Strontiumanalyses have been made on skeletons from passage graves from Falbygden and on skeletons from different regions across Europe, both from Mesolithic and Neolithic people. These results show that the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers shares no or little continuity with the Neolithic farmers, even in cases where the two groups lived in close neighbouring for a long time.

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The building of a house, or a monument, involves an important change, which significantly alters people’s roles in the landscape and their view of it. Places could be seen as unique and socially constructed. The naming of places confirms the significance of particular locations. Since the 1980´s a mass of new Early Neolithic material has been uncovered. One of the most important discoveries has been the long houses. After 1986, when the first one was excavated at Mossby in southernmost Scania several similar houses have been identified. Many of the earliest Funnel Beaker sites like Oxie, Svenstorp, Värby and Månasken are made up of different types of pits and almost nothing else  The pits, like on for example the large site Svenstorp and Månasken in SW Scania, are often layered meaning that they were actually recut and reused. Large amounts of flints debris are found in the pits, but also obviously unused implements like flake axes, flake scrapers and in some cases even complete axes and vessels. / NW Europe in Transition

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The archaeological evidence for the Neolithic of the Levant, considered to have lasted from c. 8500 to 3750 B.C., is presented and an attempt made to explain its origins and development. The discussion is concerned with four principal themes: (1) the transition from a hunter-gatherer to a farming economy, (2) the social evolution that accompanied this economic development, (3) population growth immediately before and during the Neolithic and (4) the modifications in settlement patterns which followed these other changes. The environmental changes which occurred at the end of the Pleistocene and early in the Holocene are believed to be of fundamental importance. The degree of their influence on the four main themes is examined. The effects of man's own changing activities upon his environment are also considered. The Neolithic of the Levant is divided into four stages, designated Neolithic 1 to 4, on the evidence of changes in economy, population, settlement patterns and cultural remains. Regional groups of sites, defined by their cultural material, may be discerned and their evolution followed from one stage to the next. The detailed archaeological evidence is examined principally for the light it throws upon the development of the four main themes of the thesis and the contemporary changes in environment. It is argued that the amelioration of the environment in the late Pleistocene created a greater supply of wild foods for man which stimulated population growth. This was accompanied by increased sedentism and the development of agricultural techniques. In Neolithic 2 agriculture was intensified and the population grew further. After 6000 B.C. the population of the Levant lived in permanent settlements supported by agriculture but these were concentrated only in the more fertile and well-watered areas of the Levant. This new way of life permitted another increase in population in Neolithic 4 despite a deterioration in the environment.

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