Mansion on the Hill – A Monumental Late Neolithic House at Vinge, Zealand, Denmark

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an excavation of the remains of a large, Late Neolithic two-aisled house in the northeastern part of Zealand, Denmark. The house shows a strong resemblance to the well-known Fosie-houses, but is almost three times as large as these structures. It is suggested that the building housed a Late Neolithic family, their farmhands and their livestock. Furthermore, the house’s monumentality signalled the power and wealth of its inhabitant(s) and is thus a clear indicator of the presence of an elite in the Scandinavian Late Neolithic society. The house is contemporaneous with the flourishing Únětice-centre in the Thuringia/Saxony-Anhalt region, from where copper and bronze were imported to Scandinavia. Although rooted in a Scandinavian building tradition, the Vinge house was probably influenced by the building of monumental houses in that area. The interactions with the Continent were likely based on a surplus in the Scandinavian Late Neolithic society generated by changes in agricultural strategies. These changes are reflected to some degree in the material from Vinge.