Kinship,labor, and land in Neolithic southwest Sweden: Social aspects of megalithic graves

This paper has a double purpose: first, to give an outline of the theoretical structure of a social archaeology, and, second, to exemplify this by a case from Neolithic southwest Sweden. Social models are derived mainly from Marxist social anthropology, describing different modes of regulation of work, of access to means of production and to the results of production. Such models direct attention to a number of variables. In order to be archaeologically useful, however, a series of assumptions at a lower level of abstraction must be made. These assumptions correlate social variables with material remains. Here, a number of assumptions are made regarding different aspects of megalithic tombs, through which an effort is made to arrive at a static understanding of SW Swedish society around 2400–2600 B.C.