During ongoing excavations of prehistoric settlements at Syltholm east of Rødbyhavn in Denmark, archaeologists have been investigating an area of land located on the periphery of a settlement. In the Mesolithic and Neolithic, the area was overgrown with reeds, but excavation has identified numerous tools and bones that prehistoric people had deliberately placed into this liminal zone.
Careful deposition in a Danish marshland
Interestingly, archaeologists have been able to recognise patterns in the way these artefacts are sorted by type and function and then deposited according to certain rules rather than just being randomly cast into the shallow water. The current understanding of this area is now more subtle than ever before as it is possible to separate different activities through time.
The main concentration lies around the first centuries of the Neolithic period (ca. 4000-3500 BC in this region) when technologies for the new way of life came to Denmark from Central Europe via Germany.
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