Ideology and the legitimation of power in the Middle Neolithic of Southern Sweden

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Abstract
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire The focus of this paper is on diachronic analysis and it attempts to operationalise the theoretical perspective outlined in Chapter 1 to a substantive body of prehistoric data to provide an explanation for the change from the Funnel Neck Beaker to the Battle-Axe/Corded-Ware tradition in southern Sweden. Firstly a general theoretical position is put forward for the understanding of power strategies and modes of legitimising asymmetrical power relations in small-scale, lineage-based societies. A series of detailed archaeological analyses are discussed dealing with economic and environmental evidence, orientation relationships between sites, mortuary practices, contexts of artifact deposition, and aspects of ceramic design structure. A number of homologies are shown to link disparate aspects of the archaeological evidence and interpreted as attempts to legitimise authority in relation to both between-group and within-group power differentials. It is argued that the failure of ideological practices, involving the manipulation of material culture, to legitimate social domination and conceal social contradictions led, ultimately, to a legitimation crisis and the collapse of the social order manifested in the change from the Funnel Beaker to Battle-Axe tradition.

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