Constructing Identities Structure And Practice In The Early Bronze Age Southwest Norway

This book explores the construction of regional identities in the Early Bronze Age through the temporal variation in burial practice in Southwest Norway. Earthen barrows from the regions Etne, Karmøy, Jæren, and Lista are used as the archaeological source for this study. How historically constituted structures together with external practice form part of an open-ended process of identity construction is investigated. Previous research has often used a set, rigid definition of identity, and earthen barrows along the coast of Southwest Norway have therefore frequently been portrayed as part of a southern Scandinavian culture. These perceptions are not necessarily wrong, but neglect the complicated processes that give rise to groups. In this study it is argued that patterns found in the material remains, both unintentional and intentional, express regional variation. Through a quantitative methodology based on a selection of focus points and spatial analysis in ArcGIS the multifaceted process behind identity construction is showcased. As a result, the southwest coast of Norway during the Early Bronze Age can be seen as a more complex and dynamic region. Although many similarities between regions are shared, they are also clearly divided and competitive.

This collection of articles helps to explain why the Bronze Age has come to hold such a fascination within modern archaeological research. By providing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on the evidence new interpretative avenues have opened, it situates the history of the Bronze Age in both a local and a global setting.

This innovative volume draws on a range of materials and places to explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The Bronze Age in Northern Europe was a place of diversity and contrast, an era that saw movements and changes not just of peoples, but of cultures, beliefs, and socio-political systems, and that led to the forging of ontological ideas materialized in landscapes, bodies, and technologies. Drawing on a range of materials and places, the innovative contributions gathered here in this volume explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The contributions explore how and why society evolved over time, from the changing nature of sea travel to new technologies in house building, and from advances in lithic production to evolving burial practices and beliefs in the afterlife. This edited collection honours the ground-breaking research of Professor Christopher Prescott, an outstanding figure in the study of the Bronze Age north, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field, and to shed new light on a Bronze Age full of contrasts and connections.

Socialising Complexity introduces the concept of complexity as a tool, rather than a category, for understanding social formations. This new take on complexity moves beyond the traditional concern with what constitutes a complex society and focuses on the complexity inherent in various social forms through the structuring principles created within each society. The aims and themes of the book can thus be summarised as follows: to introduce the idea of complexity as a tool, which is pertinent to the understanding of all types of society, rather than an exclusionary type of society in its own right; to examine concepts that can enhance our interpretation of societal complexity, such as heterarchy, materialisation and contextualisation. These concepts are applied at different scales and in different ways, illustrating their utility in a variety of different cases; to re-establish social structure as a topic of study within archaeology, which can be profitably studied by proponents of both processual and post-processual methodologies.

The question of ethnicity is highly controversial in contemporary archaeology. Indigenous and nationalist claims to territory, often rely on reconstructions of the past based on the traditional identification of 'cultures' from archaeological remains. Sian Jones responds to the need for a reassessment of the ways in which social groups are identified in the archaeological record, with a comprehensive and critical synthesis of recent theories of ethnicity in the human sciences. In doing so, she argues for a fundamentally different view of ethnicity, as a complex dynamic form of identification, requiring radical changes in archaeological analysis and interpretation.

Identity and mobility are two very important topics in current Bronze Age research, since this period marks a dramatic increase in long-distance connections. In contrast with many of the large-scale research projects into these phenomena, this volume brings the search for identities back down to a local level; focusing on how identities were constructed within individual cemeteries, and what role mobility might have played for burial form and content. Using diverse social theories and drawing upon natural scientific methods, an approach is developed for investigating identities within cremation cemeteries; an often overlooked data source. Through the application of this approach to two case study sites (Vollmarshausen, near Kassel and Künzing, in Lower Bavaria), new insights could be gained into Late Bronze Age identities, their construction and negotiation, and the social structures within which they played out.

This book explores households, social organization, and rituals in Viking Age Scandinavia through a study of dwellings and their doorways.