Megaliths, causewayed enclosures and social space in North Central Europe

This article summarises the results of several subprojects of the Priority Programme 1400 ‘Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation’. Under the overarching question of the development of the social space in the course of the first agricultural and stockbreeding society in southern Scandinavia, the sites Albersdorf/Dieksknöll, Büdelsdorf and Oldenburg Dannau are presented and their specific site biography is included in the supraregional developments. A trend can be traced in this context in which, due to increasing population numbers, narrowed strategic options and agglomerations of settlements, a narrowing of the social space is evolving with a climax of 3400-3100 cal BCE, which probably leads to the development of the single grave culture and thus a renewed opening of the social space due to the outbreak of some members of the Funnel Beaker societies.