Mansion on the Hill -A Monumental Late Neolithic House at Vinge, Zealand, Denmark

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of an excavation of the remains of a large, Late Neolithic two-aisled house in the northeastern part of Zealand, Denmark. The house shows a strong resemblance to the well-known Fosie-houses, but is almost three times as large as these structures. It is suggested that the building housed a Late Neolithic family, their farmhands and their livestock. Furthermore, the house’s monumentality signalled the power and wealth of its inhabitant(s) and is thus a clear indicator of the presence of an elite in the Scandinavian Late Neolithic society. The house is contemporaneous with the flourishing Únětice-centre in the Thuringia/Saxony-Anhalt region, from where copper and bronze were imported to Scandinavia. Although rooted in a Scandinavian building tradition, the Vinge house was probably influenced by the building of monumental houses in that area. The interactions with the Continent were likely based on a surplus in the Scandinavian Late Neolithic society generated by changes in agricultural strategies. These changes are reflected to some degree in the material from Vinge.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TidsskriftJournal of Neolithic Archaeology
Vol/bind19 (2017)
Antal sider28
ISSN2197-649X
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2017

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