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On the subject of the expansion of agriculture, it's interesting to note that agriculture can actually vary quite a bit. And the techniques utilized in said agriculture (and consequently, the lifestyle of the people doing it) also depend on their level of technology.
For example, there's a large difference between a sort of semi-nomadic slash-and-burn agriculture that was widespread in historical times (the forests of the Mediterranean are thought to have disappeared as a result of this practice) and a truly settled agriculture. A stone-age people lacking the means to till the soil via ploughs would be fairly likely to practice slash-and-burn farming (unless the soil is soft enough to be hoed). Also, I think there was a form of semi-nomadic slash-and-burn pastoralism practiced by people in northern Europe, where tilling the soil requires ploughs before it can be turned into productive farmland. And since the peoples that brought agriculture to northern Europe lacked such, they instead used slash-and-burn to create grazing lands and relied on herds of cattle and sheep for their sustenance (primarily, some crops were probably also grown). At least in Finland the Corded Ware remains display no evidence of agriculture, but settlements were established close to meadows, and goat bones are found, which would imply this sort of lifestyle.
As an interesting historical sidenote, the migrations of the Germanic tribes during the late Roman era may be related to the practice of slash-and-burn farming (at least wikipedia thinks so). Apparently, at least the more "primitive" of the Germanic tribes (the ones living further away from the Roman border) still lived in a mobile, semi-nomadic fashion, shifting their settlements periodically. I suspect that pastoralism also played a greater role in their economy as a result of this lifestyle, since herds of cattle and sheep are easy to move around.
Another important point related to northern peoples in particular is the discovery of bog iron. Essentially, before the discovery of these ice age-formed deposits, northern Europe largely relied on imports for metals, with the majority of the populace probably still making use of stone tools. The adoption of iron was slow in northern Europe, but around 200 BC a productive smithing industry had evolved (in larger settlements).
And with that, I think I've rambled on enough for now. I hope you find the above points useful, though!
Edit:
A small correction, when speaking of the soil in northern portions of Europe, I originally linked glacial till, which is actually a sediment type and not a soil type. The soil type in question is the podzol soil.
