ABSTRACT
Since the second millennium BC, a developing prestige-goods economy had linked the agrarian societies in Denmark to an extensive network of exchange systems. By means of this network, which covered large parts of the European continent, Denmark was for 1500 years supplied with central European bronze, which was used in domestic circulation to indicate status. For the reproduction of social formations in the Bronze Age, this prestigegoods economy doubtless had decisive importance. But then, in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, metal supplies from central Europe diminished greatly. The reasons for this are unknown but a certain degree of contraction of the interregional trade must have been the result. Then, in the last couple of centuries BC, the exchange of goods rose again; once more northern Europe was bound closely to the more highly developed economic systems in central and southern Europe.
