Tooth Beads in Two Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Societies of Northern Europe

Beads made from animal teeth were an important form of decoration among hunter-gatherer societies in Northern Europe. The analyses presented in this paper are based on questions regarding the design of the beads, the choice of animal teeth, their placement on the costume, and the exchange of beads. For these analyses, two sites with partly different conditions have been selected, one located in northern Latvia (Zvejnieki), and the other in southernmost Sweden (Skateholm). The former covers a long period of use with a large number of graves, while the latter has a smaller number of graves, but these have been studied using new methods of analysis.