Soapstone In The North Quarries Products And People 7000 Bc Ad 1700

Clachtoll broch is one of the most spectacular Iron Age settlements on the northern mainland of Scotland. When it became clear that the structure was threatened by coastal erosion, community heritage group Historic Assynt launched a major program of conservation and excavation works designed to secure the vulnerable structure and recover the archaeological evidence of its occupation and use. The resulting excavation provided evidence of a long and complex history of construction and rebuilding, with the final, middle Iron Age occupation phase ending in a catastrophic fire and collapse of the tower by the early years of the first century AD. The internal deposits span perhaps 50 years of the broch’s final occupation and were remarkably well preserved, with no evidence for secondary re-use or disturbance after the fire. As a result, the excavation provides a remarkable snapshot of life in Iron Age Scotland, with an artifact assemblage attesting to daily agricultural life as well as long-range contacts that sets the broch within a wider Atlantic community. Specialist analysis of the artifactual and palaeoenvironmental evidence coupled with detailed analysis of the structure in its local geographical context combine to provide a major new contribution to the archaeology of north-west Scotland, with wider implications for our understanding of late prehistoric society in northern Britain. This report comprises the results of the archaeological investigations at Clachtoll, compiled by a team of archaeologists and specialists from AOC Archaeology Group, and brings together evidence from a range of specialist analyses as well as environmental and landscape investigations.

Crafting Communities explores the interface between craft, communication networks, and urbanization in Viking-age Northern Europe. Viking-period towns were the hubs of cross-cultural communication of their age, and innovations in specialized crafts provide archaeologists with some of the best evidence for studying this communication. The integrated results presented in these papers have been made possible through the sustained collaboration of a group of experts with complementary insights into individual crafts. Results emerge from recent scholarly advances in the study of artifacts and production: first, the application of new analytical techniques in artifact studies (e.g. metallographic, isotopic, and biomolecular techniques) and second, the shifted in interpretative focus of medieval artifact studies from a concern with object function to considerations of processes of production, and of the social agency of technology. Furthermore, the introduction of social network theory and actor-network theory has redirected attention toward the process of communication, and highlighted the significance of material culture in the learning and transmission of cultural knowledge, including technology. The volume brings together leading UK and Scandinavian archaeological specialists to explore crafted products and workshop-assemblages from these towns, in order to clarify how such long-range communication worked in pre-modern Northern Europe. Contributors assess the implications for our understanding of early towns and the long-term societal change catalysed by them, including the initial steps towards commercial economies. Results are analyzed in relation to social network theory, social and economic history, and models of communication, setting an agenda for further research. Crafting Communities provides a landmark statement on our knowledge of Viking-Age craft and communication

This edited volume delves into the current state of Iron Age and Early Medieval research in the North. Over the last two decades of archaeological explorations, theoretical vanguards, and introduction of new methodological strategies, together with a growing amount of critical studies in archaeology taking their stance from a multidisciplinary perspective, have dramatically changed our understanding of Northern Iron Age societies. The profound effect of 6th century climatic events on social structures in Northern Europe, a reintegration of written sources and archaeological material, genetic and isotopic studies entirely reinterpreting previously excavated grave material, are but a few examples of such land winnings. The aim of this book is to provide an intense and cohesive focus on the characteristics of contemporary Iron Age research; explored under the subheadings of field and methodology, settlement and spatiality, text and translation, and interaction and impact. Gathering the work of leading, established researchers and field archaeologists based throughout northern Europe and in the frontline of this new emerging image, this volume provides a collective summary of our current understandings of the Iron Age and Early Medieval Era in the North. It also facilitates a renewed interaction between academia and the ever-growing field of infrastructural archaeology, by integrating cutting edge fieldwork and developing field methods in the corpus of Iron Age and Early Medieval studies. In this book, many hypotheses are pushed forward from their expected outcomes, and analytical work is not afraid of taking risks, thus advancing the field of Iron Age research, and also, hopefully, inspiring to a continued creation of new knowledge.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Medieval Age covers the period 500 to 1400, examining the creation, use and understanding of human-made objects and their consequences and impacts. The power and agency of objects significantly evolved over this time. Exploring objects and artefacts within art, technology, and everyday life, the volume challenges our understanding of both life worlds and object worlds in medieval society. The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds. Julie Lund is Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. Sarah Semple is Professor at Durham University, UK. Volume 2 in the Cultural History of Objects set. General Editors: Dan Hicks and William Whyte

This book explores the economic evidence for the settlement at Bornais on South Uist. It reports in detail on the large assemblages of material found during the excavations at mounds 2 and 2A. There is important evidence for craft activity, such as bone and antler working and this includes the only comb making workshop from a rural settlement in Britain. A large proportion of the copper alloy, bone and antler assemblages comprise pieces of personal adornment and provide important information on the dress and thereby social relations within the settlement occupation. There is a large assemblage of iron tools and fittings, which provides important information on the activities taking place at the settlement. The information derived from the artefact assemblages is complemented by that provided by the ecofactual material. Large amounts of animal, fish and bird bones plus carbonised plant remains provide detailed information on agricultural practices, and the processing, preparation and consumption of foodstuffs. It is clear that the Norse inhabitants of the settlement had access to a much richer variety of resources than had been exploited before the Viking colonisation of the region. The settlement also had a significantly wider range of connections; material culture indicates contacts to the south with the Irish Sea ports and Bristol, and to the north with Shetland and the Viking homelands of Norway. The evidence produced by these excavations is exceptional and provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore medieval life in the Scandinavian kingdoms of Western Britain.

This book seeks to revitalise the somewhat stagnant scholarly debate on Germanic rulership in the first millennium AD. A series of comprehensive chapters combines literary evidence on Scandinavia’s polities, kings, and other rulers with archaeological, documentary, toponymical, and linguistic evidence. The picture that emerges is one of surprisingly stable rulership institutions, sites, and myths, while control of them was contested between individuals, dynasties, and polities. While in the early centuries, Scandinavia was integrated in Germanic Europe, profound societal and cultural changes in 6th-century Scandinavia and the Christianisation of Continental and English kingdoms set northern kingship on a different path. The pagan heroic warrior ethos, essential to kingship, was developed and refined; only to recur overseas embodied in 9th–10th-century Vikings. Three chapters on a hitherto unknown masonry royal manor at Avaldsnes in western Norway, excavated 2017, concludes this volume with discussions of the late-medieval peak of Norwegian kingship and it’s eventual downfall in the late 14th century. This book’s discussions and results are relevant to all scholars and students of 1st-millenium Germanic kingship, polities, and societies.

Coastal Landscapes of the Mesolithic: Human Engagement with the Coast from the Atlantic to the Baltic Sea explores the character and significance of coastal landscapes in the Mesolithic – on different scales and with various theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Mesolithic people were strongly connected to the sea, with coastal areas vital for subsistence and communication across the water. This anthology includes case studies from Scandinavia, western Europe and the Baltic area, presented by key international researchers. Topics addressed include large-scale analyses of the archaeological and geological development of coastal areas, the exploration of coastal environments with interdisciplinary methods, the discussion of the character of coastal settlements and of their possible networks, social and economic practices along the coast, as well as perceptions and cosmological aspects of coastal areas. Together, these topics and approaches contribute in an innovative way to the understanding of the complexity of topographically changing coastal areas as both border zones between land and sea and as connecting landscapes. Providing novel insights into the study of the Mesolithic as well as coastal areas and landscapes in general, the book is an important resource for researchers of the Mesolithic and coastal archaeology.