ABSTRACT
The late 1940s and early 1950s seem in fact to have been an optimistic and creative period for archaeology in Scandinavia. In Norway especially the strong Saami/Lappish political movement of the 1980s has made it necessary for archaeologists to take a stand on the question of a Saami or Norwegian prehistory. Through the study by Sven-Olof Lindquist of the prehistoric culture landscape of Ostergotland in 1968, the modern geographical approach was introduced into Scandinavian archaeology, and immediately a fierce debate started. But as described in connection with the typological approach, it was not the field evidence, the field techniques or the results that aroused discussion. The general interest in environmental problems underwent a great expansion in Scandinavia during the 1960s and early 1970s, and the study of ecology within the natural sciences was established at the universities. The neo-evolutionist and basically materialist traditions in Scandinavian archaeology were transmitted rather easily into this form of structural-Marxism.
