Reviews
The collected works represent a valuable and thought-provoking addition to the current corpus of comparative literature on this topic, providing a number of case studies that can be examined and discussed in wider contexts.Antiquity
Comparative Perspectives on Past Colonisation, Maritime Interaction and Cultural Integration
Edited by
Lene Melheim [+–]
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
Håkon Glørstad [+–]
University of Oslo
Håkon Glørstad is Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research covers Stone Age archaeology of Scandinavia, archaeological epistemology and cultural heritage management. Glørstad has been leading or supervising several large scale excavations in Norway and research projects in Stone Age archaeology. He is currently the museum director at the Museum of Cultural History.
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad [+–]
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
This volume explores processes of colonisation and cultural integration from the end of the last Ice Age to the present from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective.
All kinds of human mobility—whether across long or short distances, and whether involving short-term or longer interactions—are potential triggers for change and also cultural integration. The colonisation of an area most clearly brings into focus what kind of social fabric encompassed the actual historical processes. Recent perspectives on the social and cultural embeddedness of exchange, and how objects facilitate constructions of identities and political legitimacy, serve to frame and explicate the role of material culture in such processes.
The contributions to this volume shed light on various social aspects of movement, migration and colonisation among hunter-gatherers and Neolithic groups as well as in chiefdoms and state societies. Geographically, an area spanning from the Mediterranean to central Europe and the North Sea region, Greenland and Siberia is covered. Three social and historical processes – the social aspects of colonisation, cultural integration and maritime interaction – are particularly discussed as interrelated phenomena.
Table of Contents
Preliminaries
List of Figures viii-xii
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
University of Oslo
Håkon Glørstad is Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research covers Stone Age archaeology of Scandinavia, archaeological epistemology and cultural heritage management. Glørstad has been leading or supervising several large scale excavations in Norway and research projects in Stone Age archaeology. He is currently the museum director at the Museum of Cultural History.
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
List of Tables xiii
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
University of Oslo
Håkon Glørstad is Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research covers Stone Age archaeology of Scandinavia, archaeological epistemology and cultural heritage management. Glørstad has been leading or supervising several large scale excavations in Norway and research projects in Stone Age archaeology. He is currently the museum director at the Museum of Cultural History.
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
Introduction
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
University of Oslo
Håkon Glørstad is Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research covers Stone Age archaeology of Scandinavia, archaeological epistemology and cultural heritage management. Glørstad has been leading or supervising several large scale excavations in Norway and research projects in Stone Age archaeology. He is currently the museum director at the Museum of Cultural History.
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
Overview of volume’s scope and contents. The volume springs from two events. One was the session ‘Moving on—colonization as a social process’, organised by Håkon Glørstad, Jarmo Kankaanpää and Ole Grøn at the European Association of Archaeologists conference in Helsinki in September 2012. The other was a conference in Oslo in December 2012, ‘Past mirrors: interaction and integration in the North Sea region in the Bronze and Viking ages’, which was held jointly by the Nordic Graduate School in Archaeology and the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, organised by Zanette Glørstad and Lene Melheim. Both sessions encouraged theoretical and methodological discussion about the effects and conditions of human mobility, and the material aspects of cultural encounters in past contexts, prehistoric as well as historical. The authors of the current volume have been invited to share their viewpoints and observations on the viability of cross-period perspectives, as well as on the future of the use of anthropological and historical analogies in archae- ology. The outcome of using such a wide spectrum of perspectives is commented upon in an epilogue by a prudent advocate of comparative methodologies, Matthew Spriggs. The volume is divided into three parts: (1) Colonisation, examining how to approach and understand various processes of colonisation in prehistory and history; (2) Maritime Interaction, focusing on the maritime environment and the signi cance of the sea as both a physical obstacle and a highway, as well as a mental and ideological threshold; (3) Cultural Integration, explored as a topic in the wake of migrations or as an aspect of societies with a strong maritime focus.
Part 1: Colonisation
University of Tartu
Aivar Kriiska is a Professor of laboratory archaeology at the University of Tartu. His primary research interests are early habitation of the Baltic Sea region and the eastern and northern European forest zone, the formation and development of Mesolithic coastal settlement and colonisation of the islands in the eastern Baltic Sea, Neolithisation in the eastern and northern European forest zone and prehistoric technology (pottery, lithic materials etc.). He has also been working on other elds in archaeology, including Medieval and Modern Age town archaeology and experimental archaeology. He has published more than 300 scienti c and popular scienti c articles and books. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, University of Tartu, Estonia. Email: [email protected]
Microlith Ltd.
Tapani Rostedt (MA) is a freelance archaeologist. His archaeological fieldwork during the last three decades (mainly surveys) has covered a timespan from the earliest settlement to modern times, both in Finland and in Russian Karelia. His main research interests concern the earliest settlement of Finland and changes in the social networks of the Bronze Age. Address for correspondence: Peltokatu 18, 20540 Turku, Finland. Email [email protected].
Mikroliitti Ltd.
Timo Jussila is an independent archaeologist in charge of a private company that specialises in archaeological fieldwork (Microlith Ltd). His primary research interests are the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods in Finland and shore displacement chronologies. He has published several scientific articles. Address for correspondence: Mikroliitti Oy, Louhentie 8 C, 02130 Espoo, Finland. Email: timo.jussila@ mikroliitti. .
The article written by Aivar Kriiska, Tapani Rostedt and Timo Jussila explores a classic case of pristine colonisation, namely the post-glacial pioneering occupation of the eastern Baltic Sea region in the ninth millennium BC. They argue that social networks developed in this period in the eastern European forest zone, extending over large territories. Social maintenance of these networks included trade in raw materials as well as semi- finished and finished tools. The authors suggest that the flint trade served as a material form of communication, which helped to preserve and emphasise a sense of unity. However, the stretched social networks between small, dispersed groups of hunter-gatherers lasted only for some generations, and an important social shift occurred c. 8500 cal BC, probably due to population growth. As a result, the large networks developed into smaller ones, and imported int was replaced by local raw material.
University of Warsaw
Dr Roksana Chowaniec is Assistant Professor in Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Poland, and chief of excavations at Akrai, Palazzolo Acreide, prov. Syracuse, conducted in collaboration with Soprintendenza dei Beni Culturali e Ambientali di Siracusa. She specialises in Roman material culture, and has collaborated in excava- tions at many other sites, such as Tanais in Russia and Novae in Bulgaria. For many years she was also an organiser of the Archaeological Festival in Biskupin. Address for correspondence: Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie Przedmiescie 26/28, Poland. Email: [email protected]
The Classical world has been an El Dorado for students of colonisation, with its rich written record on the establishment of Greek and Roman colonies. Roksana Chowaniec describes the Greek colonisation of Sicily as far more complicated and multifarious than is often acknowledged. The Greeks arrived in Sicily in 734 BC, shortly after the Phoenicians, but they occupied only the central and eastern parts of the island, leaving the western part to the Phoenicians. While the foundation of a Greek colony was usually a planned act, with an elected leader spearheading the actions of every group, in the case of Sicily different factors were at play, and no single model can be put forward as a full explanation. The long period of conquest and colonisation ended with Syracuse becoming one of the most developed and populous towns of antiquity, dominating a large part of Sicily politically, economically and militarily. This began a process of significant changes on the island, to be continued by the Romans.
MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca)
Cristina Nervi is a ceramologist of Hellenistic, Roman and Late Roman pottery in Sardinia. She has a PhD in Classical Archaeology from the Postgraduate School at the University of Genoa. Address for correspondence: Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca, Italy. Email: [email protected]
Cristina Nervi shows in her archaeological analysis of the historically well-documented case of the Roman colonisation of Sardinia that inhabitants and newcomers adapted differently from area to area, giving rise to different ways of living together. Sardinia thus represents a multifaceted cultural situation, Punic and indigenous, where relations between the Romans and the Sardinian inhabitants must be considered individually in each particular context.
Norwegian Maritime Museum
Ole Grøn has expertise in Stone Age culture including ethnoarchaeological analogies, studies of submerged Stone Age landscapes and development of relevant survey methods (remote sensing). He has experience from extensive land and maritime eldwork in Denmark, Norway, Siberia and Germany, and he has taught maritime archaeological method at UCL, London. Address for correspondence: Norwegian Maritime Museum, Postboks 720 Skøyen, N-0214 Oslo, Norway. Email: olegron111@ gmail.com
Compared to the previous chapter, Ole Grøn addresses a much more recent and quite well-documented example of colonisation from Sakha/Yakutia in Russia, which can be conceived as expansion by a food-producing culture into an area already inhabited by hunter-gatherers, beginning in the seventeenth century and continuing until the present. Grøn argues that this process has involved cultural, ideological and linguistic aspects as well as changes in the relations between the ethnic groups and sub-groups in the different zones, and is not, therefore—as is often argued in prehistoric cases of ‘neolithisation’—first and foremost a question of ecological adaptation.
Part 2: Maritime Interaction
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
This article explores the potential of the archaeological analogy, by contrasting and comparing two formative periods in Nordic prehistory: the Early Bronze Age and the Viking Age. While admitting the historical differences between the two periods, an attempt is made to assess the structural basis for the apparent similarities in the material record, i.e. to identify whether there are universal parameters behind the particularities of the two historical trajectories. In other words, we approach the crux where history meets the model. Leaning on Thucydides’ report from the Peloponnesian War, Marshall Sahlins’ analysis of the Athenian sea empire and Kristiansen’s previous comparison of the Bronze and Viking Ages, we argue that the material similarities between the two ages were not based on equifinality, but reflect congruent cultural structures that arose as responses to comparable situations, yet with different degrees of social integration.
University of Keil
Christian Horn studied prehistoric archaeology, classical archaeology and medieval history at the Ruhr-University Bochum. In 2011, he received a doctoral degree from the Free University Berlin. From 2011−2012 he was Postdoctoral Fellow in the EU project ‘Forging Identities’ at Gothenburg University. Since 2013, he has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Graduate School ‘Human Development in Landscapes’, Kiel. Address for correspondence: Graduate School ‘Human Development in Landscapes’, Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Johanna-Mestorf- Straße 2−6, 24118 Kiel, Germany. Email: [email protected]
Christian Horn investigates the interchangeability of geographical and social liminality by specifically pointing to the correlation between coastal landscapes, ‘islandscapes’ and waterborne passages, and weapon deposits in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. The interplay between diverse levels of liminality implies a form of reciprocity between warriorhood and seafaring, and calls attention to the interplay between exchange, raiding and ritual associated with the seascape as a practical as well as a cosmological arena. The chapter tries to build a model to understand why people in the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Southern Scandinavia buried weapons in the ground. This weaponry is used to a large extent in combat. Thus, an explanation cannot rely on trade-like models of commodity exchange. In an attempt to understand the weapons in their own right it will be argued that waterborne mobility in the form of raiding potentially plays an essential role in the distribution of archaeological weapon finds. The theoretical model of liminality provides the background for explaining the choice of object and the choice of place. It will be argued that both are rooted in warfare and the means of reaching the localities of war, and in the challenge of dealing with the liminality of war and the liminal state of the warrior. It will be shown how warfare and the landscape in which it took place structured ritual activities. Secondly, the evidence from use-wear analysis of weapons will be used to demonstrate the high frequency of combat. Due to a largely similar landscape, along with the importance of waterborne mobility and of fighting, it is suggested that historical examples from the Viking Age may help to understand how Early Bronze Age sacrifices relate to major passages and focal zones. Combined with the evidence for fighting, these will be attributed to a social activity: raiding. The knowledge and use of passages was a means of waging war driven by waterborne and other kinds of mobility that interconnected large parts of Southern Scandinavia.
7. Migration, Identity and Material Culture: Hanseatic Translocality in the Medieval Baltic Sea [+–] 129-148
University of Lund
Magdalena Naum is a Historical Archaeologist and Senior Researcher at the Department of Archaeology, Lund University, Sweden and University of Oulu, Finland. Her research focuses on medieval and early modern migration and diaspora, border- lands and early modern colonialism (particularly Scandinavian colonial expansion). Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University, PO Box 117, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
Magdalena Naum addresses a form of ‘betwixt-and-between existence’ in her study of translocality among Hanse merchants in the late-medieval Baltic Sea area. This paper focuses on the Hanseatic merchant diaspora in the late medieval towns of Kalmar in Sweden and Tallinn in Estonia, and explores its practices as examples of translocality. Translocal subjects maintain a complex web of connections and experience a simultaneous sense of belonging to the place of origin and the place of residence. In the case of the Hanseatic diaspora these attachments were maintained by diverse means. Material culture in particular constituted a significant element of the merchants’ diasporic and translocal lives. The paper discusses how material things – gifts, real estate, architecture and house furnishings – were used to fill the spaces of physical absence at the nodal points of translocal movement.
University of Uppsala
Neil Price is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and also holds honorary positions at the University of Aberdeen and the University of the Witwatersrand. A leading specialist on the Vikings and ancient religion, he has global interests in a wide range of archaeological subjects. He is currently researching historical piracy, the Pacific theatre of World War II, Viking burials, and the archaeology of the early modern opium trade.
Neil Price is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and also holds honorary positions at the University of Aberdeen and the University of the Witwatersrand. A leading specialist on the Vikings and ancient religion, he has global interests in a wide range of archaeological subjects. He is currently researching historical piracy, the Paci c Theatre of World War II, Viking burials and the archaeology of the early modern opium trade. Address for correspondence: Chair of North European Archaeology, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Uppsala Box 626, SE-751 26 Uppsala, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
9. Bronze Age Vikings? A Comparative Analysis of Deep Historical Structures and Their Dynamics [+–] 177-186
University of Gothenburg
Kristian Kristiansen has been Professor of Archaeology at the University of Gothenburg since 1994. His main publications include Europe Before History (Cambridge University Press, 1998); with Michael Rowlands, Social Transformations in Archaeology: Global and Local Perspectives (Routledge, 1998); with Thomas Larsson, The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations (Cambridge University Press, 2005—received the SAA best book award 2007); and, with Timothy Earle, Organizing Bronze Age Societies: The Mediterranean, Central Europe and Scandinavia (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Address for correspondence: Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, SE Box 200, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
The concept of piracy is treated in several papers in this volume as a possible model also for Bronze Age seafaring—some even explicitly comparing the sea ventures of Bronze Age mariners with those of the Vikings. This is reflected in Christian Horn’s work but most explicitly stated by Kristian Kristiansen in this article. Kristiansen observes deep structural correspondences between the Bronze Age and the Viking Age. These, he argues, were based on new maritime technologies that allowed the expansion of trade networks and the formation of semi-independent maritime economies. Kristiansen argues that population pressure led to the formation of war-bands of young warriors or sons without property, who used the maritime economy as an outlet and engaged in seasonal raiding, trading or piracy. This evolved over time into more massive colonising ventures and migrations.
Part 3: Cultural Integration
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
University of Oslo
Christopher Prescott is Professor of Archaeology and Head-of-Research at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Norway, and Docent at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has published extensively on the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age of Norway, and otherwise been involved in research concerning Neolithic to Early Iron Age prehistory in Scandinavia and Italy, history of archaeology, and theoretical and political issues. He has also worked on issues concerning illicit trade in antiquities and questions concerning how to train archaeologists and conduct outreach in a population becoming increasingly heterogeneous due to migration. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1008, Blindern 0315, Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
The argument in this article has two premises: First, migration and other forms of human movement have been the norm throughout human history. Second, western Scandinavia is rife with readily exploitable copper ores, and there might have been attempts at utilizing these in the 3rd millennium BC. Building on the concept of travelling metallurgists as an element in the expansion of the Bell Beaker phenomenon in combination with anthropological perspectives on prospecting, the article explores how prospecting for metal would have been adapted to the landscapes of western Scandinavia. Generally, although prospecting seldom leads to successful metal production, and is difficult to study archaeologically, it will often have a significant transformative impact – on both the external and indigenous actors and societies. Two archaeological sites in western Norway are expressly discussed, Slettabø in Rogaland and Skrivarhelleren in Sogn. The latter is particularly relevant as a historical case of prospecting and mining from the 1700s AD and offers insights into movement in a fjord and upland landscape.
11. Spreading Ideas: Late Bronze Age Face-urn Burials across Northern Europe and the Baltic Sea [+–] 219-233
University of Kiel
Jutta Kneisel is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the Institute of Pre- and Protohistory at Christian-Albrechts-University at Kiel and the Johanna-Mestorf Academy. She studied in Berlin and Bergen and nished her PhD at the Free University of Berlin. She works now in different projects concerning Bronze Age settlements (Bruszczewo) and burial sites (Smoszew, Bredenbek). Address for correspondence: Johanna-Mestorf-Academy, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Leibnizstraße 3, 24108 Kiel, Germany. Email: [email protected]
In her study of Late Bronze Age face-urn burials from a vast area covering present- day Denmark, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Norway and Italy, Jutta Kneisel is asking a fundamental question—whether material similarities are due to colonisation or exchange. She explains the strong similarities in the renderings of faces between individual areas as the result of intensive social interaction between groups, or between groups and individuals, in which the burial rite was adopted and transferred in an interpretative process and then found its respective regional expressions. The fact that these burial customs are coupled with regions rich in natural resources like amber and salt suggests that there were supra-regional ‘centres’ engaged in long-distance contact.
University College London, UK
Michael Rowlands is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Material Culture at University College London. He is currently Co-Director of a Leverhulme Trust funded project on local heritage initiatives in southwest China. He maintains active research on Heritage and Material Culture Studies in West Central Africa and co-directs the Centre for Research into Dynamics of Civilisation at UCL. Address for corre- spondence: Centre for Research into the Dynamics of Civilisation, B05 Gordon House, 29 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PP, UK. Email: [email protected]
University of Gothenburgh
Johan Ling is Associate Professor in Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at the University of Gothenburg. He has worked with topics on rock art and landscape but also on aspects of provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses. Address for correspondence: Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, SE Box 200, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
Mike Rowlands and Johan Ling describe exchange as part of a ‘civilisational cosmology’ that led to the spread of uniformities in material culture, settlements and landscape in the Bell Beaker period, thus starting off the European Bronze Age. They argue that the development of a comparative advantage set within this wider cosmological frame depended on defining differences in the contributions made to the reproduction of the totality. Building a comparative advantage in technology and the production of distinctive local forms made a difference in terms of the value and wealth created within a particular region.
University of Sheffield,
D.M. Hadley is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of Shef eld, and previously taught medieval history at the Universities of Leeds and Birmingham. Her research focuses on aspects of identity in the medieval period, especially ethnicity, masculinity and childhood. She is currently working on Viking over-wintering sites. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, University of Shef eld, Western Bank, Shef eld, S10 2TN, UK. Email: d.m.hadley@shef eld.ac.uk
This paper explores children’s experiences of migration during the Viking Age in the British Isles, drawing on the evidence from written sources, the funerary record, material culture used by children, and new insights from scientific evidence, principally stable isotope data. There is no doubt that children played an important role during the Viking Age in the processes of migration and settlement, and studies of recent migrations by anthropologists and sociologists offer some potentially useful analogies for our understanding of Viking-Age child migrants, highlighting the capacity of children to embrace the opportunities offered by migration. Children can be shown to act as mediators of cultural interaction and assimilation, and may prove better at adapting to language change and creating new networks of acquaintances than adults. By drawing on the insights to be gleaned from analysis of better-understood migrations we can have the confidence to interrogate our Viking-Age evidence afresh, and in turn ask fundamental questions about the broad social processes that are central to the scholarly literature on migration − including acculturation, ethnogenesis and conversion − all of which are routinely discussed purely with reference to adults. In seeking to render children as agents of past social change we can hope to develop more nuanced narratives of migration.
Afterword
14. Thoughts of a Comparativist on Past Colonisation, Maritime Interaction and Cultural Integration [+–] 271-280
The Australian National University
Matthew Spriggs is Professor of Archaeology and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra. His current project is a history of Paci c archaeology, but previously he has excavated widely in the Paci c and Island Southeast Asia, most recently in Vanuatu. He is Honorary Curator of Archaeology at the Vanuatu National Museum and Cultural Centre. Address for correspondence: CBAP, Sir Roland Wilson Building #120, The Australian National University, Acton, ACT 2601, Australia. Email: [email protected]
I read these papers looking for parallels in my own area, broadly the Pacific, not as specific sources for new models in my own practice but, as Price (this volume) puts it, “as a lens through which to view the period afresh” or rather, in my case, to view the trajectories of social change in the Pacific Islands afresh. It works the other way, too, of course; hopefully, the Pacific might, in turn, provide a similar lens. The claim of a modern evolutionary approach in archaeology (Shennan 2004) must be that one would expect parallels between sequences of cultural change where the motivations of the actors and their circumstances are similar, despite differences in geography and/or temporality. Thus, Glørstad and Melheim (this volume) seek “to assess the structural basis for the apparent similarities in the material record” – in their case between the Bronze and Viking Ages – in order to identify “universal parameters behind the particularities of the two historical trajectories”. One should stress, however, as Glørstad and Melheim indeed do, that the dissimilarities between otherwise seemingly parallel sequences should be equally instructive; they allow us to examine what happens when one or more parameters change, and why such changes can spin the trajectory in each particular case off in a different direction. Glørstad and Melheim also brilliantly illustrate the limitations of classic ethnographic analogies in considering aspects of the Bronze Age: “the Pacific has been to the Bronze Age what the written sources have been to the Vikings”. And, one might add, their examples clearly show the limits of both relational and direct historical analogy in explicating archaeological data.
End Matter
Index 281-289
University of Gothenburg
Lene Melheim is an archaeologist and Section Manager at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her background is at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, where she undertook research and teaching 2001−2012. Melheim held a postdoctoral position at the University of Gothenburg 2012−2015. Her research covers a number of topics in Bronze Age archaeology, in particular systems of distribution, mobility, craft and technology, metal production, metal trade and cosmology. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email [email protected]
University of Oslo
Håkon Glørstad is Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research covers Stone Age archaeology of Scandinavia, archaeological epistemology and cultural heritage management. Glørstad has been leading or supervising several large scale excavations in Norway and research projects in Stone Age archaeology. He is currently the museum director at the Museum of Cultural History.
University of Oslo
Zanette Tsigaridas Glørstad is Associate Professor in archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. Her area of research and publications cover a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular burial rituals, settlement patterns, identity formations and cross-cultural interaction. Address for correspondence: Department of Archaeology, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: [email protected]
Antiquity
