the 1970s. The Iron Age in Scandinavia acquired the dates of the sixth century b.c. to eleventh century a.d.

In Tidsbestämning, Montelius synchronized historically datable comparative finds from the Mediterranean and Middle East with Scandinavian conditions. In so doing, he could set the span of the Bronze Age from 1500 to 500 b.c. In comparison with the eighteenth-century Bible-based datings and the nineteenth-century vague chronological interpretation (Worsaae, for example, maintained in the 1850s that the Bronze Age reached its peak at around the birth of Christ), this was an enormous step forward.

Early 1900s

During the first half of the twentieth century, archaeological source materials increased considerably, new perspectives opened up, and old methods were refined. In general, research was directed toward settlement history and the history of style.

Settlement history had existed during the nineteenth century, but during the first decades of the twentieth, it became more focused and systematic, and better known to a wider circle of researchers. Investigations of regional complexes of settlement remains also began at this time. Oscar Almgren (1869–1945), together with the botanist and Quaternary geologist Rutger Sernander (1866–1944), made early advances in this field. In 1901, they investigated Uppland’s settlement history, encouraged by the discovery of the first Middle Neolithic settlement (ca. 2800 b.c.) in central Sweden.

In 1907, Knut Stjerna (1874–1909) initiated extensive archaeological provincial investigations in southern and central Sweden, focusing on the Stone and Bronze Ages. It was hoped that the project would eventually encompass all of Sweden, and the intention was to study the typology and chronology of the artifacts found as well as their topographical distribution. The project resulted in several dissertations and publications, but never encompassed all of Sweden.

Geographical, geological, and ecological factors were all important to an understanding of settlement development. Place-name research and historical and ethnological analogies were applied to the Iron Age. The Royal Place-Name Committee began to publish Sveriges Ortnamn [Swedish Place-Names] during the early twentieth century. Within the history of style, typology was more important, visible, for example, in Hanna Rydh’s (1891–1964) doctoral dissertation of 1919, the first thesis in archaeology to be written by a woman.

The term primitive was used regularly. Within the history of style it was used to characterize the development of different elements of style, and there were also reference to prototypes, manufacturing processes, and industries. These terms coincided with typological and chronological questions. The term settlement history was used in debates on ethnicity and race. The basic question to answer was how different Mesolithic cultures developed into Neolithic cultures. A dualistic relationship was sought, which implied either that immigrating people, or people of other races, who had a higher technological and intellectual level had suppressed the first cultural phases or that the Neolithic level had been achieved within the country’s boundaries and that more-primitive hunting cultures had been suppressed or assimilated.

In that context, ethnographical and ethnological analogies had some importance. The choice of language revealed uncertainty in the relationship to the “primitive” Mesolithic peoples, which gave rise to theories that implicitly, or occasionally explicitly, expressed a reluctance to accept the idea that such comparative “primitive” cultures had existed in Scandinavia at the same time as the cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages. On the other hand, the more “developed” and artistically more “talented” cultures of the Bronze and Iron Ages did not have the same problems concerning identification. One could accept and even identify with Neolithic cultures because they depended on agriculture and livestock. The means of distancing oneself from the “primitive” cultures of the Mesolithic was to transfer them into being part of the natural world, and thus to being governed by the laws of nature. In the case of the Bronze and Iron Ages, one could easily identify with the creative powers and great initiatives of these cultures. This pattern has certain parallels with