Resumen de Gathering Practices in Eastern-Central Sweden During the Middle and Late Mesolithic
This paper deals with the gathering practices in Eastern-Central Sweden during the middle and late Mesolithic. Following the post-processual paradigm, the idea of women as hunters has come to be accepted. However, men as gatherers seem to have gotten less attention. The aim of this paper is to understand who the Mesolithic gatherer was. By using James J. Gibson’s (2015) theory of affordances on the region’s most common biofact, the hazelnut (Corylus avellana), I argue that the social organisation of women as gatherers and men as hunters is an incorrect interpretation for the region. The affordances of the hazelnut rather speak for the gatherers collectively being the hunters, the fishers, the women, the men, the children, and the old—gathering is not a set of practices that belongs to a social group, but a set of practices performed by all members of the society.
