Why do some material expressions have an uneven distribution (i.e. they occur in large numbers in some regions and in limited, or very few numbers, in other regions)? A similar uneven distribution of material culture expressions could also be studied on a smaller-scale level, where certain locales are loaded with symbolic expressions that make them stand out as unique in a comparative perspective.

In Scandinavian Bronze Age research, the uneven distribution of bronze items, rock art and burial monuments has often been explained by referring to individuals. In this explanatory framework the irregular distribution of valuable objects, symbolic expressions and monuments reflects the power of individuals (i.e. chiefs who through their supreme position were able to channel labour into monumental and symbolic manifestations of power; Larsson 1986; Kristiansen 1998; Kristiansen & Larsson 2005).

In this chapter I propose a shift in focus from individuals to the geographical framework that power operated within. The power of individuals was linked to networks with a spatial extension. Even though there were contacts over very large distances in the Bronze Age (Kristiansen & Larsson 2005), the chiefs – or people in command of power – operated within smaller regions on an everyday basis.

As pointed out by Adam T. Smith on the background of a study of early complex polities, politics is not directly about territories, or urbanism or architecture; it is about the production and reproduction of authority. However, authority is constantly constituted in the ordering of landscapes (Smith 2003: 280).