Remodelling the neolithic in Southern Norway: Another attack on a traditional problem

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Abstract
The explanations for agricultural development in southern Norway are based on three archaeological variables; land use, settlement patterns, and wealth and cultural affinities displayed in rituals and burials. The present explanatory models for Neolithic socio‐economic change in eastern and western Norway emphasize external origins of change, and are based on general, regional pollen diagrams and on the assumption that sites located on good soils and/or the presence of Neolithic artifacts from southern Scandinavia indicate an agricultural economy. A critical evaluation of the basic evidence and new interpretive models based on long‐distance social relations of production and exchange, in‐context subsistence information, and intensive use of the forest for grazing and cultivation suggest different explanations for the development of agriculture in eastern and western Norway. Middle Neolithic ‘de‐neolithification’ in eastern Norway may represent an intensification in the use of the available domestic and marine resources rather than a decline. The long period of limited agricultural activity in western Norway is attributed to social as well as environmental factors.

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