ABSTRACT
Investigation of man’s habitat in south Scandinavia in the interval between the melting of the ice and the beginning of agriculture seems to show that before the High Atlantic period no single ecological zone offered sufficient resources to provide enough food for a year-round population group. Consequently, the hunter-gatherer societies had to exploit not one but several ecological zones. Only in this way could they alleviate the risk of food shortage during the critical months of the year. An understanding of the prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities is therefore dependent upon the extent to which it can be ascertained how the annual territory was used season after season and what size the hunter-gatherer groups had in the various seasons. Knowledge of these conditions is also necessary in understanding not only the material culture but also the organization and structure of the population of Denmark in the millennia under discussion.
