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Nordic Bronze Age Economies
- Christian Horn, Knut Ivar Austvoll, Magnus Artursson, Johan Ling
- Coming soon
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- Expected online publication date:
- May 2024
- Print publication:
- 30 June 2024
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- Element
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This Element provides a multi-scalar synthesis of Nordic Bronze Age economies (1800/1700–500 BCE) that is organized around six sections: an introduction to the Nordic Bronze Age, macro-economic perspectives, defining local communities, economic interaction, conflict and alliances, political formations, and encountering Europe. Despite a unifying material culture, the Bronze Age of Scandinavia was complex and multi- layered with constantly shifting and changing networks of competitors and partners. The social structure in this highly mobile and dynamic macroregional setting was affected by subsistence economies based on agropastoralism, maritime sectors, the production of elaborate metal wealth, trade in a wide range of goods, as well as raiding and warfare. For this reason, the focus of this book is on the integration and interaction of subsistence and political economies in a comparative analyses between different local constellations within the macro-economic setting of prehistoric Europe.
A Highly Precise Chronology for the Process of Neolithization in Southern Scandinavia: The ESS Project in Lund, Sweden
- Bettina Schulz Paulsson, Magnus Andersson, Magnus Artursson, Kristian Brink
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- Journal:
- Radiocarbon / Volume 59 / Issue 2 / April 2017
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 09 September 2016, pp. 583-593
- Print publication:
- April 2017
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- Article
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In 2013, one of Sweden’s largest archaeological excavations started in association with the building of the European Spallation Source (ESS) multidisciplinary research center in Lund. The 160 radiocarbon dates that were produced for the project represent the most exhaustive dating program for a Scandinavian site so far and provide evidence for the human impact and activities on the site from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. This article presents the results within a Bayesian statistical framework for the 70 14C dates from the Early Neolithic settlement (object 1) and a burial site with dolmens and wooden façades. For the first time, a highly precise chronology provides deeper insight into the Neolithization processes and the early settlement strategies in southern Scandinavia from ~3800 cal BC onwards.
3 - Regional Settlement Patterns
- Edited by Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois, Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Organizing Bronze Age Societies
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2010, pp 57-86
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter leads a three-part, multiscalar analysis of human settlement as a means to understand basic dynamics of social, political, and economic organisation. The three scales of analysis are handled in this chapter for the regional pattern of settlement distribution with respect to cultural landscapes, in Chapter 4 for the structure of individual settlements with respect to the layout of houses and other spaces, and in Chapter 5 for the character of individual households. A multiscalar approach helps explicate alternative means by which prehistoric, European populations built up their organisations by articulating modular, but variable, units of family, community, and polity. Each of these organisational levels maintained distinctive dynamics that were balanced with and against larger formations (Johnson and Earle 2000).
At the level of the microregion, we attempt to reconstruct changing patterns of settlement for the three major areas of study in Scandinavia, Hungary, and Sicily. Work involved detailed, systematic surveys in each region to identify, date, and describe settlements from late prehistory. As the surface signatures and preservation of sites varied from region to region, the particular survey methods used had to be adapted to local conditions, but our objectives were always to describe sites according to criteria that would be comparable across time and across the three regions. Using survey results, we examine how human populations spread out with respect to each other and to economic and social opportunities in the landscape in order to understand the regional organisation and economy of prehistoric society. We thus consider the size of settlements, their spacing and association, their correspondence with productive and trading opportunities, and, ultimately, how settlements were organised into political systems. The three regions document parallel developments of settlement hierarchies that suggest chiefdom-like political organisations. The centrality, scope, and openness of these systems were, however, highly variable, and we argue that the different pathways of development reflect specific conditions of regional and international political economies, the export and import of key commodities, and the control over trade in key wealth objects. Although the pieces were similar, the nature of political hierarchies proved to be quite variable, especially in the degree of centrality and their political power. Material and historic conditions appear together to determine these alternative pathways towards complexity.
4 - Settlement Structure and Organisation
- Edited by Timothy Earle, Northwestern University, Illinois, Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborgs Universitet, Sweden
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- Book:
- Organizing Bronze Age Societies
- Published online:
- 05 June 2012
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2010, pp 87-121
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- Chapter
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Summary
This chapter compares the structure and organisation of settlements across Europe, bridging the chapters on regional settlement patterns and households. The settlement represents the local organisation of habitations: how households were placed with respect to each other and to common spaces for work, ceremonies, and social interaction. Important variables included the density and number of contemporaneous households, the permanence of house sites and their interrelations, the existence of defining fortifications, and internal social differentiation marking social distinction. Overall, the settlement types varied within each region and appear in each region to represent settlement hierarchies of regional polities (Chapter 3). The size and density of the largest settlements, however, show a marked trend from relatively small and informal aggregates in Scandinavia to large, proto-urban settlements in Hungary and Sicily. The larger settlements in Hungary and especially in Sicily appear to have a regular settlement structure, with houses in well-defined lots, roadways, and public spaces. In Sicily, a central, religious complex defines a new level of corporate labour investment. Although social differentiation surely existed in all circumstances, complexity varies quite markedly in its form. In Scandinavia, elite households stood out, but appear more as a part of a flexible network of changing power relationships seen also in the metal wealth and burial mounds; in Hungary, a more common, corporate group identity was signalled by apparent uniformity of houses and material culture; and, in Sicily, the formal settlement structure suggests a clear elite stratum defined by multiroom structures and international material culture evidently marking differences (Chapters 3 and 5).
Southern Scandinavia
Settlements and their organisation in southern Scandinavia during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age were heavily dependent on the significance of the individual regions and their natural resources, though some general trends seem valid for the whole area (Artursson 2005a,b; 2009). Our two case studies in southern Scandinavia focus on regions in close proximity to the sea – Thy in northwestern Jutland, Denmark (Earle 2002) and Tanum in western Sweden (Ling 2008). The Thy region, at least during the Early Bronze Age, must be considered an important part of the networks in the central Limfjord region, but Tanum was more marginal.