Archaeological investigations in the interior of northern Norway came late and have been few compared with the coastal region. The first systematic surveys and excavations took place in the late 1950s, and up until the 1970s northern Norway’s inland region was largely limited to ethnographic studies of Sámi culture. The inland of northernmost Fennoscandia was one of the central regions for this, and the research focus was on ethnographic documentation of Sámi premodern lifestyles, including language and folktales, religious practices and beliefs, material culture and economy and, particularly, premotorized reindeer herding. The leitmotif was that traditional practices were under pressure from Western modernization, and had to be documented before they disappeared. Processes of change over time were seldom addressed, and the outcome of these studies could be said to have left an impression of a timeless Sámi past, although some of the ethnographic studies included archaeological investigations. The title chosen for this chapter is not meant to indicate a transition in disciplines and related methods from ethnography to archaeology. Instead, it should be read as indicating a transition in aims, goals and objectives over time for culture-historical research interest in Norway’s northern inland. In this chapter, central factors and leading figures for the culture-history investigations in northern Norway are presented, giving precedence to developments and research relating specifically to the interior.

This chapter deliberately is titled concepts and methods rather than theory and methods. When archaeologists present a theory chapter or text subsection they typically roll out a conceptual package of paradigm-like form, consisting of a superstructure of high-order abstractions that serve as first principles. In some cases, data are simply ‘fitted’ to these abstractions, resulting in a weak metaphorical relationship between theory and data: literally a ‘package solution’. Limited attention is paid to the underlying infrastructure of basic concepts that are needed to do the heavy lifting at the empirical level. Concepts are the basic building blocks of theory and for our purposes it seems most pertinent to focus on the blocks rather than on their articulation into superstructural theory. We therefore turn to reflection on some of the fundamental categories of thought and modes of categorical organization used by archaeologists and indigenous Sámi people to conceptualize landscapes and the residues left behind by activities on those landscapes. This infrastructure is not independent of higher-level models (‘theories’), but we want to scale down and consider the operational concepts that we use to think and talk about the processes we are interested in.

Human practices in the environment consist both of immediate observation and experience, as well as acting within an archive of inherited cultural knowledge that constitutes a conceptual framework for decision making and for talking about and reflecting upon the environment. Knowledge acquisition is both individual and experiential, updated ‘on the fly’, and it also has an extended temporal dimension that involves reproduction through cultural models and social relations. Thus, cultural models are not static determinative programs, but instead are constructed and reconstructed through experience. The physicality of the environment provides both constraints and opportunities for human action, as do the ontologies through which humans interact with various non-human entities. The knowledge accumulated through landscape practices is archived in socially distributed networks, and a primary instrument for this is human memory, which facilitates intergenerational transmission. But memory is also assisted by various material aides de mémoires – place names, artifacts and rock art representations – what some might call ‘distributed’ or ‘situated’ cognition. Some practices rather than others are reproduced preferentially over time, so we need to address what may have been ‘selected’ for the developmental pathways undergone by different practices. Archaeological interpretations of landscape are by necessity situated in our own ontologies, yet we must imagine past worlds of action based on other ontologies. In this chapter we outline some ways of thinking about how humans and other entities live in landscapes, with emphasis on archaeologically useful perspectives. We are particularly concerned with the forms of living termed hunting and herding. We begin with a general discussion of a ‘practice ecology’ or ‘ecology of practice’ that lays out some basic premises of the approach. The reflections presented here inform some of the other chapters in this volume, but they should not be taken as constituting a common framework. One of the central challenges is how a ‘relational’ perspective can be operationalized archaeologically. We provide some examples from place name studies, sacred sites and rock art.

Archaeological and anthropological discussions of human relationships with the environment in northern Norway are usually based on a fundamental dichotomy between the coast and the inland. This crude folk classification does capture the significant differences between maritime and terrestrial environments, but it glides over the important variations found in each zone. Furthermore, with respect to our focus – the archaeology of the inland – the dichotomy is not informative as to what constitutes the boundary of the ‘inland’ relative to the ‘coast’. Such bounding, of course, is primarily a matter of cultural perception, so we need to address how we have drawn our imaginary limits to our study area. In this chapter we first outline the primary physical and climatic parameters of the region, which underlie the common perceptions of coast/inland contrasts. We then focus in on the two areas which have framed the research of the LARM project (Landscape and Resource Management in Interior Arctic Norway 2500 BC-AD 1000 – see Chapter 1, this volume): Troms and Finnmark counties. For each county we consider important local variations in topography and ecosystems, the current vegetation and faunal distributions, and the availability of lithic raw materials of relevance to prehistoric peoples. This overview provides a general orientation for the reader, relevant to early modern times and at least as far back as the Middle Ages.

Establishing an environmental history framework is foundational for archaeological studies of landscape relations. The rapid accumulation of high-resolution climate change data from northern Fennoscandia in recent years has resulted in a much more complex picture than was previously available, so much so that it is beyond the capacity of this chapter to provide more than a summary. We begin with a short discussion of the North Atlantic climate system because its dynamics strongly condition the proxy data sources we consider here. After a brief consideration of deglaciation processes during the Late Pleistocene to Holocene transition, we provide an overview of Holocene vegetation history in northern Fennoscandia, as inferred from pollen and dendrochronological proxies. We then turn to the main trends in climate change and their implications for human responses.

In this chapter we synthesize the results of the 1960s–1990s fieldwork for interior Finnmark, the late 1950s to early 1960s and the early 2000s fieldwork for the Báhčeveaijohka/Pasvik river valley in eastern Finnmark, and the 1970s to early 2000s fieldwork for interior Troms. We also include some previously unpublished data. We begin with a presentation and reassessment of the groundbreaking investigations of medieval sites at Juntavađđa and Ássebákti, after which the results from the early 1970s surveys in central Finnmark are summarized. Several excavated sites are selected for brief presentation, in order to portray some of their range of variation and to provide data that will be referred to in later chapters. We then provide an overview of the 1980s–1990s investigations along the ÁlttáeatnuGuovdageaineatnu/Altaelva-Kautokeinoelva, before moving on to a presentation of the investigations along the Báhčeveaijohka/Pasvikelva. Finally, the Troms investigations are presented. The chapter concludes with a consideration of how these previous investigations set the stage for the LARM project. This section also includes an overview of some of the results from a cultural heritage registration campaign in central Finnmark in the 1980s not originally designed to include prehistoric sites, but where a fortunate local initiative has provided us with a large number of archaeological sites. This illustrates the potential for identifying a variety of sites when a project is not geographically restricted by developmental plans, typically close to the major waterways, as is the case for all the other registration campaigns presented here.

The LARM project (Landscape and Resource Management in Interior Arctic Norway 2500 BC–AD 1000 – see Chapter 1, this volume), while primarily focusing on Kárášjohka/Karasjok municipality (see Chapter 8, this volume), also undertook small-scale investigations in western Finnmark, and these are presented here. Additionally, one of the stepping-stones for the LARM project was a research project on prehistoric housing in the interior conducted by one of the authors (MS) in the mid-2000s (Skandfer and Bruun 2006; Skandfer 2009a; 2012a) in the Báhčeveaijohka/Pasvik and Deatnu/Tana river valleys, in the eastern part of Finnmark. These excavations have not previously been published, and the connection with the LARM project’s overall theme of landscape knowledge and resource management makes it relevant to present them here.

Right from the early planning of the LARM project (Landscape and Resource Management in Interior Arctic Norway 2500 BC–AD 1000 – see Chapter 1, this volume), it was obvious that in order to gain maximum insights pertaining to the project’s aims, the field investigations should form a continuation of the present author’s fieldwork within his Stone Age of Southern and Mid-Troms County in its Northern Fennoscandian Context project (Blankholm 1998; 1999; 2001; 2008b; 2011b). Intensive surveys and excavations had been carried out since 1998 and 2001 in the two focus areas: Ostu, between Alte- and Leinavatnet (Fig. 10.1), and Lille Rostavatnet (Fig. 10.24, below). However, more information was needed for deeper insights into what were supposedly monitoring sites, and into the use of house pits and hunting-pit systems. Thus, in 2009 Leinavasshytta 1 – a supposed monitoring site found in 2001 (Blankholm 2009b) – was excavated, and the dwelling pits Leinavasshytta 2, 3 and 4 test pitted in order to extract charcoal for a prospective set of dates. Leinavasshytta 4, prospectively dated to 2390 ± 30 BP (415–400 BC – Blankholm 2011b), was totally excavated the following year, and in 2011 the focus shifted for a season to dwelling pits at Lille Rostavatnet 1 and Lombolnes 1, along with the previously test pitted Lombolnes 2 site (prospectively dated to AD 600–675) (Blankholm 1998; 1999; 2011b). In 2012, the focus shifted back to Ostu in order to test pit and date a wider range of dwelling pits and hunting-pit systems. The dwelling pits at Buolžagorssajohka, Leinavatnet III and Skierreluokta 1 and 2 were test pitted, as well as individual pits in the hunting systems Leinavatnet V, Røykskaret and Suttesgáldojohka (Suddesgoldajohka). Below are presentations of the two focus areas and a detailed account of the individual field investigations.

The aim of the current chapter is to discuss Sámi resource exploitation in interior Troms, grounded on the archaeological evidence from two sites with row-hearths (i.e. hearth-row sites) at Guomojávrrit. In the discussion, the question of Sámi involvement with tame reindeer prior to the mid-sixteenth century is emphasized. It is argued that a comparative study of relevant written sources, place names and evidence from relevant archaeological sites, finds and results from Guomojávrrit may shed new light on the scope and character of Sámi economy, landscape exploitation, social organization and ethnic interaction since the late Iron Age (IA). As a background for discussion, a presentation will first be given of the landscape characteristics and historical sources of this region, as well as a short review of research on hearth-row sites.

The discussion is based on material from surveys and excavations carried out between 2009 and 2013 within the LARM project as well as unpublished data from earlier research investigations conducted by the authors and material from previous excavations and registrations by national culture heritage management. The data are primarily geographically restricted to Finnmark and Troms counties, but with complementary material from the three northernmost municipalities of Anár/Inari, Eanodat/Enontekiö and Ochejohka/Utsjoki in Lapland, Finland, and the northern part of Norrbotten, Sweden. We begin with a brief perusal of the research history and a presentation of the evidence, after which we proceed to issues of chronology, and then of how the sites relate to geography, topography and soils. We then discuss the various shapes and sizes of the dwellings, and finally address contemporaneity, continuity and the reuse of house pits, sites and selected areas.

I begin with a brief descriptive introduction to hunting pits as archaeological features, before turning to a consideration of the ethnohistorical sources on ungulate hunting in northern Fennoscandia. I then provide an overview of previous research on hunting facilities, concentrating on hunting pits and with an emphasis on northern Norway, which leads into a consideration of the methodological challenges raised by this research. This is followed by a discussion of the dating of hunting pits. I then turn to the archaeological data of interior Troms and Finnmark counties, which are handled by telescoping between different geographical scales. At the broadest scale, I begin with an overview of the distribution of hunting pits in these two counties but also including data from neighboring areas of Finland and Sweden – these are relevant because prior to the imposition of modern state boundaries both ungulates and humans traversed across much of this region. I then zoom in to consider selected portions of the two Norwegian counties, with the goal of discussing the organization of hunting-pit systems on the regional level. In particular, I examine how hunting-pit systems are arranged in a regional landscape and how these regional arrangements fit with modern reindeer migration routes and seasonal pastures. The zoom in then continues further, with a look at selected examples of individual hunting-pit systems, ranging from smallscale (<10 pits) to large-scale (300 pits) systems, and exploring how they make use of their immediate landscapes and what they might imply about the local organization of ungulate hunting. The discussion then turns to hunting strategies and organization, variation in hunting intensity relative to climate changes, and issues of resource management.

This chapter aims to (1) consider the impact of climate and vegetation changes on resource availability and human settlement in Finnmark, with primary focus on the period between 6300 and 1 BC (the forest maximum to forest minimum) and (2) use an eclectic perspective of practice ecology (see Chapter 4, this volume) associated with elements of foraging theory to generate baseline models for resource use under different ecological and socio-economic conditions. The approach sees the actions of human agents as positioned within their inherited cultural models, which inform their interaction with landscapes and the non-human entities and things that these landscapes contain. Its primary focus, however, is the practices developed for dealing with the material constraints and opportunities afforded by changing environments. Foraging theory contributes to formulating settlement model expectations, but behavioral ecology is not used as a paradigmatic framework. Overall, the goal is to produce heuristic models that can inform future research on interior settlement in northern Norway. Particular attention is paid to archaeologically visible signatures of change in the organization of mobility patterns. The emphasis is on the west-central portion of interior Finnmark, the main operational region for the LARM project.

The chapter begins with a short discussion of previous ethnological and historical interpretations of the emergence of reindeer herding in northern Fennoscandia and Circumpolar Eurasia, with emphasis on the former. This is followed by an outline of post-World War II anthropological discourse regarding the social context of herding relations. Then comes an overview of archaeological interpretations of the process in northern Fennoscandia (see also Aronsson 1991; Storli 1996; Hansen and Olsen 2004: 96–103, 203–14; 2014: 82–93, 195–206; Andersen 2005a; Sommerseth 2011). I then turn to a discussion of variation in reindeer practices and lay out what I mean by small-scale herding characterized as hunting-embedded herding and transport-affordance herding. This is followed by ethnographic illustrations. I then consider the potential archaeological signatures of pastoralism and hunting-embedded herding, asking whether it is empirically possible to detect the latter organization in the archaeological record. Finally, I consider the conditions under which one might expect to see the emergence of small- and large-scale herding in northern Norway.

In this chapter I consider the historical sources relevant to Sámi life in early modern interior Finnmark. I begin with a brief overview of Finnmark’s historical context from the Viking Age until the 1700s. The central focus of the chapter, however, is early modern demographic trends and economic conditions in interior Finnmark as inferred from the Swedish state taxation data, which provide the most detailed and semi-continuous historical record for the inland regions (for an overview of the sources, see Hansen 2011b; 2012). I engage with historical data for two primary study areas: the Guovdageaidnu (Kautokeino) and Ávjovárri (Kárášjohka/Karasjok) districts (Fig. 17.1, below). Limited reference is also made to a third adjacent district, Láhpojávri (Láhpoluoppal). These districts are historical siida areas; that is, Sámi ‘band’ territories (for northern Norwegian siida areas see Vorren 1978; 1980). The conclusion considers to what extent we can use these historical data as analogues to interpret the distant past.

This chapter presents findings from the pollen analysis of sample series from Áhkárvárri in Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino municipality and Šuoššjávri in Kárášjohka/Karasjok municipality, preceded by a revised analysis of a previously published analysis of a sample series from Oalgejohka (‘Oaggejokka’ in the first publication), also in Kárášjohka/Karasjok municipality (Høeg 2000). The series for Oalgejohka was procured during fieldwork in 1996 and 1998, while the samples for Šuoššjávri and Áhkárvárri were gathered in 2011 with Professor Ericka Engelstad of the University of Tromsø and analyzed as part of the LARM project.

Returns to the questions that were broached in the introduction, issues that the LARM project (Landscape and Resource Management – see Chapter 1, this volume) took as its point of departure: (1) When during the early postglacial period was the interior colonized by Early Stone Age (ESA/Mesolithic) peoples and to what extent was it used during the early-mid Holocene? (2) How was inland settlement organized during the Late Stone Age (LSA) and Early Metal Age (EMA) (ca. 5000–1 BC), and were there separate inland versus coastal territorial groups? (3) Was there local iron production in the EMA? (4) When was Sámi ethnic/social identity established, and why? (5) Is the ‘Void’ period of the first millennium AD a culture-historical reality or a consequence of shortcomings in archaeological survey methods and priorities? (6) When did the transition from reindeer hunting to herding occur? (7) How relevant is Sámi history and ethnography as a source for analogies in interpretations of northern Fennoscandian prehistory? We can provide better-informed answers to some of these questions, but not all. Regarding the local production of iron during the EMA we have not moved the question any further. With respect to the establishment of Sámi identity, this question is complex and requires a supraregional perspective, because identity formation was part of a broad-scale networking process. Thus, we will not take this issue further here. The remaining questions, however, can be more usefully addressed by the data that have been assembled. These questions are formulated in chronological order, so we can address them sequentially.