Challenges the terrestrial focus of European prehistory, emphasizing the significance of seascapes, maritime networks, and coastal societies in shaping prehistoric Europe.For many years now, the main thrust of European prehistory has followed a fundamentally terrestrial plot line. This terrestrial paradigm has undervalued the story of Europe as a peninsula between the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atl

Island and coastal societies around the world followed several unique developmental pathways that allowed for the formation of economically and politically complex systems. In this paper we argue that marine resources allow levels of intensification comparable to that of terrestrially focused societies, while seaworthy boats amplified the ability of emergent leaders to trade and raid over long dis

In order to get an answer to the question of where a Viking-era harbor could possibly be placed in Löddeköpinge, indicators such as Lödde kar, Lödde å, the seasonal market place at Vikhögsvägen in Löddeköpinge, the permanent settlement in Löddeköpinge, the church village in Löddeköpinge, the burial field and the church in Löddeköpinge and Borgeby's trelleborg need to be studied in relation to

The Viking Age (c. 800–c. 1050 ad) was characterised by a widespread rise in maritime mobility and interaction, as is made clear by an increasing range of evidence. However, this evidence provides limited information about the sailors and the sailing voyages that connected and transformed the Viking world. This paper presents an approach to reconstruct Viking Age maritime itineraries through the c

The transition to the Nordic Bronze Age included new technological innovations, social institutions and sociopolitical structures pushed by extensive long-distance exchange of metals and other exotica. However, traditional views often oversimplify this as a simple two-way trade system, failing to adequately explain the complex interactions in and between the regions like Scandinavia in which the s

Extraordinary finds from the Store Frigård cremation cemetery on the Danish island of Bornholm suggest that the society that used the site played a key role in supra-regional contacts and in the distribution of goods and people across the Baltic Sea between the Continent and Southern Scandinavia during the Iron Age.

This paper presents a snapshot of a neolithic maritime exchange network centred on the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) site of Tråsättra (circa 2630 to 2470 BCE), located northeast of modern-day Stockholm, Sweden. We used a combination of Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Atomic Emission Spectrometry (ICP-MA/ES) and thin section analysis to study and source the clays used to produce 19 potsherds and 39 ce

This paper examines the role of imported Rhenish pottery in the expression of cultural identity by Frisian merchants in Viking Age emporia. From the beginning of the Viking Age, a new maritime trade network developed in the North Sea and Baltic region that would eventually connect vast areas of Europe through long-distance trade. Along these routes new trade settlements would appear, the emporia.

This thesis investigates textile production in Viking Age Iceland. While in the past two decades a significant amount of research has been done on the textiles that have been recovered during archaeological excavations, research on the textile production itself remains underexplored. Current thinking assumes that production followed a standard household-based model across Iceland, but this interpr

The growing use of digital tools in archaeological practice has led to a proliferation of data. Concerns regarding how to best manage and store these significant volumes of archaeological data have been addressed by the development of digital research data infrastructures which function to ensure the long-term preservation of archaeological information and make it available for reuse. Recent Open

This thesis was conducted to explore the capacity of West Slavic culture’s influence on that of early medieval Denmark from the 9-12th centuries through the examination of artifacts from both camps. Through the methodological observation of Danish and West Slavic material culture, their contexts and their connectivity between West Slavs and Danes, I apply assemblage and actor network theory (ANT)

Miniaturisation of weapons and other tools is a phenomenon seen throughout the Viking Age in Scandinavia. Predominantly using the theory of semiotics, previous publications on miniature weapons have reached similar conclusions as to the functions of these objects. Three main interpretational threads can be seen repeated throughout the previous research; miniature weapons as symbolic objects, minia

Abstract in UndeterminedCastles research has for a long period of time been concentrated to single sites: the origin of the individual castle, its different phases and dating and the castle’s place and importance in the political process. At the same time, castle studies have mainly seen the castle as a military structure. Today a broader view of the castle has emerged. The purpose of this paper i

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In what way can an artisanal perspective and artisanal knowledge contribute to current archaeology? How can theories about skill and expertise explain and affect research on artisanal issues? These are the questions that are in focus and have been explored in the four collected papers and in the concluding article in this thesis. The author proposes an artisanal perspective from an interdisciplina

Källa on Öland is used as a point of departure in a discussion of the so-called defensive churches or multi-functional churches at the Baltic Sea. The categorization of medieval society into four separate spheres, the church, the castle, the town and the countryside, is criticised as having created a heterogenous group of deviant churches. The deviant churches have been interpreted in three compet