ABSTRACT
In the period after c. 4200 BC it is possible to observe a number of decisive changes in the economy of the prehistoric population in Denmark: the first signs of a new subsistence form, agriculture, now appear. The early archaeological evidence for the incipient food production is very sparse, but after the middle of the fourth millennium BC the innovations appear in their full range. This radical transformation of the economic structure of prehistoric society seems, as already mentioned, to be very complicated and is still far from clarified. Formerly the process was considered in Danish archaeology to have occurred quite suddenly and to have manifested itself as an economically, technologically, chronologically and demographically distinct transition. Nowadays, there is much to indicate that a far more complex view of this vital transitional phase must be employed. One fact, however, is indisputable: the incipient food production, meaning stock-rearing and grain-cultivation, gradually came to exercise a profound influence on all areas of the population’s mode of living. Yet we must remember that early farming hardly revealed itself immediately as a great blessing to its first practitioners. There is good reason to presume that at first farming was only a modest supplement to normal activities. Most of the food probably still had to be obtained by hunting and gathering.
