Handel, produksjon og kommunikasjon : en undersøkelse av klebersteinsvirksomheten i Aust-Agders vikingtid med fokus på Fjære og Landvik

Master degreeARK35

Trade and Hierarchy: The Viking Age Soapstone Vessel Production and Trade of Agder, Norway

The Viking Age soapstone vessel production and trade in Norway was a spatially allocated enterprise due to limited access to raw materials and the logistically confining topography of the country’s rugged landscapes. In the southernmost Norwegian region of Agder, vessel production was concentrated along the waterways of the river Nidelva, which empties into Skagerrak near the agriculturally and archaeologically rich farms on the moraine soil of the Fjære parish. The research presented here looks into a number of aspects related to the soapstone industry of the Agder region, from the quarries and production sites, via distributional and topographical patterns, to the trade and consumption of the products. The implications of the soapstone industry for power structures and hierarchical developments of Agder during the Viking Period are addressed on a local scale as well as within a larger chronological and spatial context

Mobile pastoralist groups and the Palmyrene in the late Early to Middle Bronze Age (c. 2400­1700 BCE): An archaeological synthesis based on a multidisciplinary approach focusing on satellite imagery studies, environmental data, and textual sources

The PhD dissertation “Mobile pastoralist groups and the Palmyrene in the late Early to Middle Bronze Age (c. 2400-1700 BCE): An archaeological synthesis based on a multidisciplinary approach focusing on satellite imagery studies, environmental data, and textual sources” by Torbjørn Preus Schou aims to answer three main questions surrounding the Bronze Age Palmyrene. First, what did the Palmyrene landscape look like in the past and how did climatic developments impact biomes and land-use in the region? Second, what are the features of the thousands of cairns and other archaeological remains documented in the steppe and what can be discerned about their distribution patterns? Third, what is the nature of the suggested link between Near Eastern mobile pastoralist groups and the Palmyrene tumuli? By analysing climatic studies and environmental data, it becomes clear that the Palmyrene looked significantly different in the past, and the present landscape is a result of an ecological disaster occuring in the 20th century CE. Google Earth satellite imagery studies have documented a tremendous extent of three particular archaeological structures in the steppe – tumuli, stone enclosures, and kites – all of which show distinct forms and distribution patterns. Finally, it seems clear that mobile pastoralist groups indeed used the Palmyrene seasonally as spatial focus for a multi-resource procurement strategy, although pasturing of ovicaprines seems to have been the main activity. These pastoralists formed a component of larger kinship groups, which included sedentary people, who by shared tradition and custom could claim territorial rights to both agricultural areas and pasturelands. The latter of these, the vast and open steppes, were marked as ancestral pasture territory by the burial of kinsmen, the erection of monumental cairns, and upheld through post-mortuary rituals carried out annually as part of the mobile season

Glacial Archaeology in Northern Norway—The Island of Seiland

Norway is at the forefront of monitoring ice patches and glaciers for archaeological remains, and thousands of artifacts have been recovered over the past two decades due to accelerating melting. The majority of finds stem from the lower latitudes of the country and relatively little is known about the glacial archaeology of Norway’s far north. We use historical maps and high-resolution LiDAR derived elevation models to monitor ice flow and melt. We employ a terrain ruggedness index to map areas of non-moving ice which possibly contain well-preserved archaeological finds, and model least cost paths to understand the accessibility for humans and animals of an archaeologically unexplored landscape. We then conduct a sailboat supported exploratory survey on the arctic island of Seiland. While we fail to locate archaeologically productive ice, we identify and date a so far unknown type of archaeological stone structure likely related to sheltering and reindeer hunting/herding activities

Soapstone in the North. Quarries, Products and People 7000 BC - AD 1700

This book addresses soapstone use in Norway and the North Atlantic region, including Greenland. Although the majority of the papers deal with the Iron Age and Middle Ages, the book spans the Mesolithic to the early modern era. It deals with themes related to quarries, products and associated people and institutions in a broad context. Recent years have seen a revival of basic archaeological and geological research into the procurement and use of stone resources. With its authors drawn from the fields of archaeology, geosciences and traditional crafts, this anthology reflects cross-disciplinary work born of this revival