ABSTRACT
It remains an astonishing fact that thousands of impressive stone built barrows (cairns) are scattered along the coasts of the Gulf of Bothnia, hundreds of miles north of the central settlement areas and production areas of the Scandinavian Bronze Age (Plate 10.1). We find a similar phenomenon along the Norwegian coast (Plate 10.2).1 In an environment dominated by Stone Age technology, with only a few imported bronzes, these north Scandinavian parallels in stone to the south Scandinavian barrows in grass and turf (Plate 10.3)
have puzzled archaeologists for many decades. They are part of an old debate in Scandinavian archaeology concerning the cultural and economic interrelationship of central and marginal areas during the Scandinavian Bronze Age.
