Sweden’s first fortifications? Rethinking hunter-gatherer complexity in stone-age Scandinavia

During the Mesolithic and Neolithic, Scandinavia was home to hunter-gatherer populations that were characterized by sedentary living, territoriality, intensive marine focused economies, and high levels of interpersonal violence. These characteristics have been well documented by recent work, yet many narratives of hunter-gatherer lifeways continue to describe our most ancient ancestors as having lived simple and egalitarian lifeways. This pilot project seeks to critically examine these portrayals by checking for the presence of defensive structures at four hunter-gatherer sites from Sweden using modern remote survey techniques.