Details
This edited volume delves into the current state of Iron Age and Early Medieval research in the North. Over the last two decades of archaeological explorations, theoretical vanguards, and introduction of new methodological strategies, together with a growing amount of critical studies in archaeology taking their stance from a multidisciplinary perspective, have dramatically changed our understanding of Northern Iron Age societies. The profound effect of 6th century climatic events on social structures in Northern Europe, a reintegration of written sources and archaeological material, genetic and isotopic studies entirely reinterpreting previously excavated grave material, are but a few examples of such land winnings. The aim of this book is to provide an intense and cohesive focus on the characteristics of contemporary Iron Age research; explored under the subheadings of field and methodology, settlement and spatiality, text and translation, and interaction and impact. Gathering the work of leading, established researchers and field archaeologists based throughout northern Europe and in the frontline of this new emerging image, this volume provides a collective summary of our current understandings of the Iron Age and Early Medieval Era in the North. It also facilitates a renewed interaction between academia and the ever-growing field of infrastructural archaeology, by integrating cutting edge fieldwork and developing field methods in the corpus of Iron Age and Early Medieval studies. In this book, many hypotheses are pushed forward from their expected outcomes, and analytical work is not afraid of taking risks, thus advancing the field of Iron Age research, and also, hopefully, inspiring to a continued creation of new knowledge.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Charlotta Hillerdal & Kristin Ilves
Settlement and Spatiality
1.Marianne Hem Eriksen - Dream-houses of the Late Iron Age: The house and the self
2.Marte Spangen & Johan E. Arntzen - Sticky Structures and Opportunistic Builders.
The Construction and Social Role of Longhouses in Northern Norway
3.Susanna Eklund & Anneli Sundkvist - The Tale of three Tuna Sites. A Classic scholarly
problem enlightened by new archaeological material
4.Helena Hulth - Ultuna – a late Iron Age gateway to Uppsala
5.Anders Andren - A new central place in Southwest Scania?
Field and Methodology
1.Elin Engström - In the archaeological house
2.Kristin Ilves & Kim Darmark - Striking a blow for the plough layer. Exploring diverging
interpretations of a Late Iron Age site
3.Andreas Hennius & John Ljungkvist - Correlations and conflicts between 14C dates
and find chronologies in a transition phase – exemplified by the Ottar's mound in
Vendel
4.Daniel Löwenborg & Åsa Larsson - The Bright New (Digital) Future of the Past
5.Helena Victor – Sandby Borg – a frozen moment of the Migration Period
Text and Translation
1.Bosse Gräslund - Beowulf. The Scandinavian background
2.Jhonny Therus - Rebooting the Gospel for a Germanic audience. A structural analysis
of Heliand the Saxon Gospel, an acculturation poem from the 9th century
3.Anne-Sofie Gräslund - “Björn and Torkel they raised all these kumls”
4.Lotte Hedaeger - Knowledge systems of the past? Iconography, typology and change
from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages
5.Alex Sandmark – Bog bodies: Iron Age law in the landscape
Interaction and Impact
1.Jan-Henrik Fallgren - Settlement reduction or continuity? Reflections on the Early
Medieval Åland
2.Charlotta Hillerdal - Negotiating narratives in a newly settled Norse landscape. An
emic perspective on the reuse of ancient monuments in the Scottish Isles.
3.Neil Price and Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson - War music: martial funerals from the
Viking-Age Scandinavian world
4.Olof Sundqvist - Female Cultic Leaders in Germanic and Ancient Scandinavian
Sources
5.Svante Fisher - The Solidus from Slättäng
Reviews & Quotes
"This affordably priced catch-up on some exciting new work was a pleasure to read and review.
The volume adopts a commendably interdisciplinarian approach, at its broadest combining two aspects of material culture, archaeology and text and, at a more micro-level, bringing together several sub-disciplines within archaeology. These fruitful combinations are directed towards exploring (and unsettling) the long-debated concept of centre–periphery.
... [I]t remains an excellent contribution to the field."
Mark A Hall
Medieval Archaeology
(05/10/2022)
"…consider new ways of understanding archaeological landscapes as they use works of art created by Poraj-Wilczynska to question conventional perspectives on landscape."
Claire Nesbitt
Antiquity
(01/06/2021)
