Mats Larsson.
Life and Death in the Mesolithic of Sweden.
Oxbow. 2017
Over the last 20 years a vast number of new and important Swedish Mesolithic sites
have been excavated and published in different ways as articles books and site reports.
As yet there has been no study that tries to bring the loose ends together
and so the main task of this important new work by one of Sweden’s leading prehistorians
is to provide an extensive overview of some of the main sites and results.
The timespan is long: c.10,000–4000 BC and the amount and choice of data very large
so rather than attempt to describe everything in detail Mats Larsson focuses on
a series of fundamental research perspectives concerning Mesolithic lifeways and settlement patterns
and chooses key sites to illustrate them.
The emphasis is on southern and middle Sweden, though the country’s northern regions are in no way forgotten.
This companion piece to the author’s recent successful volume Paths Towards a New World: Neolithic Sweden,
written for a general audience is also a must for all those archaeologists interested in the Mesolithic of Northern Europe
and would-be students of prehistory.