Arrowheads as indicators of interpersonal violence and group identity among the Neolithic Pitted Ware hunters of southwestern Scandinavia

•Pitted Ware flint arrowheads were not chronological but functional determined.•Pitted Ware arrowheads were specialised into hunting and war arrowheads.•New aspects on Neolithic warfare and its socio-cultural implications.•Production techniques reveal communities of practice among the Pitted Ware.•New indications on Pitted Ware contacts across the Kattegat in the Neolithic.

The three main types of tanged flint arrowheads (A, B, and C) characteristic of the Neolithic Pitted Ware hunter, fisher and gatherers of southwestern Scandinavia are traditionally viewed as chronological conditioned. However, recent studies have shown their simultaneity during the early 3rd millennium BC. Based on a study of more than 1500 arrowheads from Denmark and western Sweden, this paper explains the stylistic variation of the Pitted Ware arrowheads as functional determined representing two main categories: relatively short and wide hunting arrowheads (type A) and long and slender war arrowheads (type C). Type B represents a multifunctional group of arrowheads that mixes features from type A and C. Furthermore, diverging production schemes (schema opératoire) used for the shaping of hunting arrowheads has helped to identify social groupings within the larger southwestern Scandinavian Pitted Ware complex and contact across the Kattegat during the Middle Neolithic.