Archaeology of Children

Archaeology of children is a relatively new field of research within archaeology. This article gives an overview of the advancement of the subject and discusses theoretical and methodological approaches applied to the study of children in the past, such as terminology and theory of childhood, and proposes an alternative approach to children and childhood. The many-faceted worlds of children and children’s material culture are reconsidered from the perspective of phenomenology. Nature-culture relationships and spatial dimensions in the archaeology of children are explained with long-term perspectives for archaeology.La arqueologia de la infancia es un campo de investigacion relativamente nuevo en nuestra disciplina. Este articulo pretende ofrecer una vision general de los avances en esta tematica y de las discusiones teoricas y aproximaciones metodologicas aplicadas al estudio de los ninos y ninas en el pasado, tales como la terminologia y la teoria sobre la infancia, y propone una mirada alternativa a la infancia y a los ninos. El mundo de los ninos tiene multiples facetas que se reconsideran desde una perspectiva fenomenologica. Las relaciones entre naturaleza y cultura y las dimensiones espaciales de la arqueologia de los ninos se intentan explicar con la perspectiva a largo plazo para la arqueologia

Konflikter i landskapet: Kulturminnevern og kulturforståelse: Analyse av alvedans og utmarksmiljø i Hå kommune i Rogaland, SV-Norge

Også en del levert som forfatterens avhandling (dr. art.)- Universitetet i Bergen, 2004The work is a theoretical and empirical study of how the management of the cultural heritage is perceived by different interest groups in the society. It represents a new approach which has been little dealt with within heritage research and where the theoretical basis is weakly grounded. The study is limited to a district on Jæren, SW-Norway, where agricultural land use is in conflict with much of the cultural heritage and landscape. The investigation includes an interdisciplinary study between archaeology and palynology of a specific category of mysterious earthworks – the so-called ‘fairy rings’ – and the environment surrounding them. The ‘fairy rings’ represent a category of ancient monument specific to this rural district. It is non-distinct in the environment and on the surface, for preservation purposes a vulnerable type of cultural heritage which often goes unnoticed and is cleared away unintentionally or illegally by farming activities. The overall object of the study is to gain a wider understanding of the cultural perceptions and public attitudes towards the cultural heritage in the rural district. Firstly, by increasing the knowledge of the age, function and context of the earthworks in relation to the question of continuity-discontinuity of the past in the present. Secondly, by exploring how this knowledge influences the environmental management regimes of the landscape, i.e. the environmental bureaucrats and the farmers. The hypothesis is that the earthworks represent a cultural context which designates a ‘non-place’ in the landscape, i.e. a place which has lost any historical significance in the present. The theoretical approach of the analysis allows the researcher to practise phenomenology by focusing on the phenomena which characterise the heritage and landscape management as perceived by them as an outsider. It directs the analysis towards an emphasis on the ethical aspects involved in conflicts between clashing interests. The study reveals new and underlying aspects by throwing light upon those interests which are common and those which distinguish the managers from each other in relation to the general conflicts which dominate the historical gap between agricultural and heritage management. The interdisciplinary investigation reveals the earthworks to be the bases for haystacks in the marginal land of out-fields dating between the end of the Early Iron Age (cal. AD 410-450) and AD1835-ca.1970), thus representing a long duration of use and continuity in the landscape. A gap in the perception of the landscape exists between the two professions of managers. A transformation, earlier into supra-natural places of a mythical landscape, later into a ‘non-place’, has been going on since the stacking of hay fell out of use by the local farmers from the 19 th century onwards. The results show the two groups of managers to have different attitudes towards the landscape. Their perspective differs backwards and forwards in time, in their choice of value and in their perception of the landscape. A strategy is presented which offers a way of dealing with present-day conflicts

Til patriarkatets pris - Sosial struktur og kulturkonflikter i kulturminnevernet

publishedVersio

The past in the present. Landscape perception, archaeological heritage and marginal farmland in Jæren, south-western Norway

This is an electronic version of an article published in the Norwegian Archaeological Review© 2007. Copyright Taylor & Francis; Norwegian Archaeological Review is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00293650701708891This paper examines the background of conflicts in the resource management of a specific type of ‘utmark’ in the agrarian landscape. The historical relationship between empirically experienced ‘utmark’ and the resource management of archaeological heritage and environment surrounding it is analysed. The landscape perceptions of two professional management regimes are used as platforms to gain a wider understanding of worldviews in relation to the ‘utmark’ environment. The landscape orders are based on a landscape cosmology of prehistoric origin, but which modern versions are scaled differently, mirroring changes of worldviews. One management on the other superimposes an extreme dissonance of inferiority between contradictive landscapes aesthetics

Introduction to socialisation : recent research on childhood and children in the past

This introduction to the complex and manifold study of childhood and children in the past is one of the first presentations dedicated to socialisation that combines both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches to the field. On the theoretical and methodological level, the author reflects upon some general and particular aspects of this type of study, sums up the contributions to the volume and looks at significant tendencies and trends for future work in the recent research represented by established and up-coming scholars in the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, classical studies and ethnohistory

Transforming images: Exploring powerful children

The perception of children as vulnerable, instead of powerful, beings is the opposite of what is found to be the case in the historic evidence. The paper investigates the relationship between ideology and material culture by examining some attitudes towards children found in Scandinavian traditions, which have been connected with archaeological finds. This concerns the area of the Norse Sagas and the comparative studies of religion, folk medicine and folklore in relationship to the tradition of burial alive in the Nordic regions. In relation to children's access to origin of a cosmological order it looks into the Norwegian Odal law of the firstborn and pre-Christian practices concerning the treatment of children

Øyets lyst er sist til å knekkes : hvordan er hensynet til kulturmiljø og landskap ivaretatt ved revisjonen av plan- og bygningsloven?

The Museum of Archaeology, Stavanger, in co-operation with the University of Stavanger, focus on the education of cultural managers and planners of the present day landscape in relation to the future. A broad perspective is demanded of the knowledge to protect the cultural heritage and their environment, in particular those places in the environment, which are unknown and invisible, or indistinctly perceived in the landscape. The aim of the revision of the Planning and Building Act is the simplification of the planning system in order to make the control of land use and enterprise more effective and flexible in the future. High attention is given to the value of aesthetic qualities in the landscape. These are goals, which set in motion should pay special attention to the lack in public’s awareness and understanding of the hidden traces of the past in the cultural landscape. Going unnoticed by the public these places could give raise to new environmental conflicts in the future

Small scale archaeology. Remarks on Synnøve Vinsrygg's paper.

Acts from a workshop held at Utstein Kloster, Rogaland, 2.-4. november 1979 (NAM-Forskningsseminar nr. 1)It is assumed that it is possible in the material from the Stone Age sites to recognize the results of the process of teaching children how to survive. Analysing "the refuse material" and "poorly" made artifacts from camp sites on such a basis will definitely be rewarding

Making them draw : the use of drawings when researching public attitudes towards the past

Republished with permission from Taylor & Francis. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis group

Something about children

Published with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.The paper deals with the epistemological background of archaeology's conceptualisation of children's identities in the past. In the advancement of child archaeology there is something about children that catches the eye of the archaeologist, and something that evades it, which concerns the formation and interpretation of the archaeological data material. This paper focuses on the understanding of central concepts, which form a theoretical bridge to the study and mediation of childhood and children in the past. Multi-cultural and interdisciplinary research based on a common epistemology is required in order to advance the subject further on the academic scene