ABSTRACT
The third and second millennia BC seem to have witnessed three major developments. First, farming communities gradually abandoned their wide-spectred subsistence strategy for the development of transhumance, a process with parallels over most of northern Europe (C.F.W. Higham, 1967). Second, the growth of non-egalitarian ranked societies accelerated, ending with the emergence of so-called chiefdoms. The most impressive result of this development was the ambitious barrow-building of the second millennium BC. Third, interregional contacts grew in intensity. The archaeological record reflects this phenomenon in the widespread distribution of metal objects, which also reveal the presence of complex sumptuary rules within the developing chief doms.
