The thesis identifies and discusses some fundamental changes that took place during the middle neolithic period in Sweden, with the introduction of the Boat Axe Culture. The possibility of intrepreting the Corded Ware Cultures by way of networks, identified through the regional designes of battle axes, are proposed. With the aid of a reconsideration of the typology of the Swedish boat axes, ethnographic examples of gift-exchanges, and a theoretical reappraisal of the implications of archaeological praxis for prehistorc life-worlds, new possibillities for interpreting the changing role of such prestige items as the boat-axes are presented. A new chronological scheme is also presented for the Swedish boat axes, with a tripartite division of the latter middle neolithic into MN BI-III. The value of the boat axe is further considered to be explicable only in terms of a prestige item, dependent on a system of exchange for its continual valuation. Central to this discussion is the relationship between value and exchange. Several regions within the Swedish Boat Axe Culture are identified, and the boat axes in two of these regions in the southern part of the Mälar valley are thoroughly examined. It is shown that during the cours of the Boat Axe period, the emphasis gradually changed from a regional to an intra-regional focus concerning the development of types and special designes of the boat axes. Identified similarities and dissimilarities of contemporary boat axes within and between regions are explained as a result of a parallel change in gift exchanges, from a regional focus to an intra-regional focus. An hierarchical ordering of the latter middle neolithic soceity is also identified, where only a portion of the boat-axes were selected as burial gifts. This development is chartered onto the broader neolithic development in Sweden, with special focus on the role of prestige items such as battle axes. A fundamental change is identified as taking place during the Boat Axe period, when the full implications of a prestige economy were implemented and the major strategies for power settled on the inter-regional level.

Untersucht werden mitteldeutsche Gräber der Kulturen mit Schnurkeramik, die Artefakte aus organischem Hartmaterial enthalten. Die Artefakte werden typologisch gegliedert und Betrachtungen zu Technologie, chronologischer Stellung sowie Verbreitung im Arbeitsgebiet angestellt. Am Beispiel zweier ausgewählter Typen wird überprüft, ob Korrelationen zwischen deren Anordnung im Befund, Grabformen sowie Alter und Geschlecht der darin Bestatteten bestehen. / The author analyses graves of the Corded Ware in Central Germany, which are containing artefacts made of organic hard material. These artefacts were typologically classified and their technology are regarded as their chronological and spatial distribution. On the instance of two types the author tests the correlation between their positions in the graves, the grave-types and sex and age of the skeletons.

The non-metric postcranial traits characterize biological variability of human skeletal morphology. Special attention is beeing paid to changes in some muscular or ligaments' binding areas and to changes of the articulation facets which are considered to be possibly retaled to excessive physical stress, occuring through the lifetime. The osteological material belonging to the populations of the Corded Ware culture and the Bell Beaker culture in the area of Bohemia has been surveyed with respect to non-metric trait occurence. The origin of both of these culture bearers is still a discused issue. There is a hypothesis saying that bearers of both Late Eneotithic cultures might represent actually one population and the differency of cultural patterns were due only to life-style changes, not to large-area migration. With respect to the frequency of 94 postcranial non-metric traits both samples have been compared to each other on a basis of measure of divergence and mean measure of divergence. The samples of Late Eneolithic populations showed significant difference only in frequencies of two non- metric traits and along with the values of mean measure of divergence they seem to show rather homogeneity. Afterwards both samples were compared with a sample from Great Moravian burial site Mikulčice - Kostelisko and...

This one-year master's thesis investigates the late part of the Middle Neolithic on the island of Gotland. This thesis has been written without the influence of a singular theoretical pespective, and has therefore seen input from the processual, and postprocessual theories. By using several perspectives, an attempt is made to view the material remains used in the most objective manner possible. The specific aim of this thesis is to investigate whether the Mid-Neolithic inhabitants of Gotland were a part of the Corded Ware culture (or as it is called in Sweden, the Battleaxe culture or the Boataxe culture). Most recent literature has concluded that Gotland was never a part of the Battlexe culture, though this thesis has discovered many parallels with the mainland culture, including the production of similar objects and ritual practices. There are indications that the Gotlandic culture also integrated traits from several other coastal regions of the Baltic Sea, something most Battle Axe settlements did not. After investigating all the data that have been linked with the Battleaxe culture, this thesis concludes that the people on the island of Gotland were not fully assimilated to the Battleaxe culture, but were approaching the culture in both a material and ritual aspects. This leaves the conclusion that the Gotlandic culture towards the end of the Middle Neolithic was somewhat of a hybrid.

There were used human skeletal remains from eight Older and Late Eneolithic burial sites from Bohemia to set their health status. I used remains of 307 individuals. Paleodemography analysis of cemeteries and cultures was made. There were shown possible modifications of life table values based on experiment with modern population values. During paleoepidemiological analysis I described the most important categories of pathological findings. The results of analysis were used to make comparisons between themselves and with individuals from the Moravian cemetery of Bell Beaker Culture from Hoštice I za Hanou. An unexpected result was the statistically significant difference in the height of Bohemian and Moravian population of Bell Beaker Culture. Male individuals of Funnel Beaker Culture had the lowest height of all. There were found only two congenital anomalies, plagiocephalia and Klippel-Feil syndrome (fused cervical vertebrae). X-ray images were made of the most important findings for better diagnosis. Except the classic categories of pathologies I detected two cases of hyperostosis frontalis interna, both females from a burial site of Corded Ware Culture in Vikletice. In five cases were found osteoplastic growth on the visceral surface of the ribs of individuals of Bell Beaker Culture from...

In South Sweden the third millennium BC is characterised by coastal settlements of marine hunter-gatherers known as the Pitted Ware culture, and inland settlements of the Battle Axe culture. This thesis outlines the history of research of the Middle Neolithic B in general and that of the pottery and burial practices in particular. Material culture must be understood as the result of both conscious preferences and embodied practices: technology can be deliberately cultural just as style can be un-selfconscious routine. Anthropological and ethnoarchaeological research into craft and the transmission of learning in traditional societies shows how archaeologists must take into consideration the interdependence of mind and body when interpreting style, technology and change in prehistory. The pottery crafts of the Pitted Ware and Battle Axe cultures were not just fundamentally different technologically, but even more so in the attitudes toward authority, tradition, variation and the social role of the potter in the community. The Battle Axe beakers represent a wholly new chaîne opératoire, probably introduced by a small group of relocated Beaker potters at the beginning of the period. The different attitudes toward living bodies is highlighted further in the attitudes toward the dead bodies. In the mortuary ritual the Battle Axe culture was intent upon the creation and control of a perfect body which acted as a representative of the idealised notion of what it was to belong to the community. This focus upon completeness, continuation and control is echoed in the making of beakers using the ground up remains of old vessels as temper. In contrast, the Pitted Ware culture people broke the bodies of the dead by defleshing, removal of body parts, cremation, sorting, dispersal and/or reburial of the bones on the settlements. The individuality of the living body was destroyed leaving the durable but depersonalised bones to be returned to the joint collective of the ancestors. Just as the bodies were fragmented so were the pots, sherds and bases being deposited in large quantities on the settlements and occasionally in graves. Some of the pots were also tempered with burnt and crushed bones. At the end of the Middle Neolithic the material and human remains show evidence of a growing effort to find a common ground in the two societies through sharing certain mortuary rituals and making beakers with a mix of both traditions, stylistically and technologically.