Pre-Roman Iron Age

The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland and the Netherlands.

The region enters the Mesolithic around the 7th millennium BCE. The transition to the Neolithic is characterized by the Funnelbeaker culture in the 4th millennium BCE. The Chalcolithic is marked by the arrival of the Corded Ware culture, possibly the first influence in the region of Indo-European expansion. The Nordic Bronze Age proper begins roughly one millennium later, around 1500 BCE. The end of the Bronze Age is characterized by cultural contact with the Central European La Tène culture (Celts), contributing to the development of the Iron Age by the 4th century BCE, presumably the locus of Common Germanic culture. Northern Europe enters the protohistorical period in the early centuries CE, with the adoption of writing and ethnographic accounts by Roman authors.

The following is a refined listing of Northern European archaeological periods, expanded from the basic three-age system with finer subdivisions and extension into the modern historical period.

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