Importance of Amber
Amber from the Early Stone Age was deposited in a few graves, in bogs and left behind on a few settlement sites. The number of graves and deposits known from the Mesolithic period is relatively small and those containing amber are very scarce and have been found in Denmark and Scania only. Large polished pendants of golden or deep reddish brown amber with incised geometric ornaments, and figurines of boar, bear, elk and duck were fashioned by Mesolithic foragers in South Scandinavia.
Already in the late Mesolithic period man began to fashion the type of amber object which to the present day has remained the most common-the bead. The ideal bead is circular and centrally pierced in order for a string of some sort to pass through. Beads may have very different shapes, though, tubular, discoid, globular, barrel-shaped etc., and be of different size. Sometimes, from graves and deposits, but they are rare. It is interesting to note that amber objects from the Neolithic found in the southern part of Norway show connections to Jutland, while amber finds from the middle part of the country seem to have come from the east Baltic area probably via Sweden.