Author: Joris Coolen Publisher: ISBN: 9781407312262 Category : Antiquities, Prehistoric Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
In May 2011, a team of archaeologists from the Department of Prehistory and Historical Archaeology of the University of Vienna, assisted by colleagues from the Czech Republic and Norway, carried out a research excavation at the Law Ting Holm in Tingwall on Shetland's Mainland. The site is believed to be the place of the main assembly of Shetland, which was in use most likely from the Norse period to the second half of the 16th century.
Author: Sanmark Alexandra Sanmark Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 1474402305 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
Until very recently Viking and Norse assembly sites were essentially unknown, apart from a few select sites, such as Thingvellir in Iceland. The Vikings are well-known for their violence and pillage, but they also had a well-organised system for political decision-making, legal cases and conflict resolution. Using archaeological evidence, written sources and place-names, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of their legal system and assembly sites, showing that this formed an integral part of Norse culture and identity, to the extent that the assembly institution was brought to all Norse settlements.Sites are analysed through surveys and case studies across Scandinavia, Scotland and the North Atlantic region. The author moves the view of assembly sites away from a functional one to an understanding of the symbolic meaning of these highly ritualised sites, and shows how they were constructed to signify power through monuments and natural features. This original and stimulating study is set not only in the context of the Viking and Norse periods, but also in the wider continental histories of place, assembly and the rhetoric of power.
Author: Sarah Semple Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1000096688 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.
Author: Anne Pedersen Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag ISBN: 877184936X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 636
Book Description
The Viking Congresses bring together scholars of archaeology, philology, history, toponymy, numismatics and a number of other disciplines to discuss the Viking Age from a variety of viewpoints. This volume contains 44 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the 18th Viking Congress held in Denmark in August 2017. The contributors take up the interdisciplinary challenge, and the papers cover a wide range of subjects, rooted in the past, but also connecting to the present.
Author: Dale Serjeantson Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789259576 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 524
Book Description
The Archaeology of Wild Birds in Britain and Ireland tells the story of human engagement with birds from the end of the last Ice Age to about AD 1650. It is based on archaeological bird remains integrated with ethnography and the history of birds and avian biology. In addition to their food value, the book examines birds in ritual activities and their capture and role in falconry and as companion animals. It is an essential guide for archaeologists and zooarchaeologists and will interest historians and naturalists concerned with the history and former distribution of birds.
Author: Niall Sharples Publisher: Oxbow Books ISBN: 1789250471 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 1013
Book Description
The settlement at Bornais in the Western Isles of Scotland is one of the largest rural settlements known from the Norse period in Britain. It spans the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century AD when the Atlantic seaboard was subject to drastic changes. The islands were systematically ravaged by Viking raiders and then colonised by Norse settlers. In the following centuries the islanders were central to the emergence of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, played a crucial role in the development of the Lordship of the Isles and were finally assimilated into the Kingdom of Scotland. This volume explores the stratigraphic sequence uncovered by the excavation of Bornais mounds 2 and 2A. The excavation of mound 2 revealed a sequence of high status buildings that span the Norse occupation of the settlement. One of these houses, constructed at the end of the eleventh century AD, was a well preserved bow-walled longhouse and the careful excavation and detailed recording of the floor layers has revealed a wealth of finds that provides invaluable insight into the activities taking place in this building. The final house in this sequence is very different in form and use, and clearly indicates the increasing Scottish influence on the region at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The excavation of mound 2A provides an insight into the less prestigious areas of the settlement and contributes a significant amount of evidence on the settlement economy. The area was initially cultivated before it became a settlement local and throughout its life a focus on agricultural activities, such as grain drying and processing, appears to have been important. In the thirteenth century the mound was occupied by a craftsman who produced composite combs, gaming pieces and simple tools. The evidence presented in this volume makes a major contribution to the understanding of Norse Scotland and the colonisation of the North Atlantic in a period of dramatic transformations.
Author: Beverley Ballin Smith Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd ISBN: 1784917710 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
Excavations in North Uist dating from 1974-1984 identified two cists with human remains in kerbed cairns, many bowl pits dug into the blown sand, two late Neolithic structures and a ritual complex.
Author: James Graham-Campbell Publisher: Edinburgh University Press ISBN: 1474468624 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 317
Book Description
1.Scotland Before the Vikings --2.Norwegian Background --3.Sources for Scandinavian Scotland --4.Regional Survey Part I: Northern Scotland --5.Regional Survey Part II: the West Highlands and Islands --6.Regional Survey Part III: South-West, Central, Eastern and Southern Scotland --7.Pagan Norse Graves Part I: Case Studies --8.Pagan Norse Graves Part II: Interpretation --9.Viking Period Settlements --10.Late Norse Settlements --11.Norse Economy --12.Silver and Gold --13.Earls and Bishops.
Author: Alasdair Mark Brooks Publisher: ISBN: 9780813054339 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
"Much needed. Fills an existing gap in the historical period with a wide range of examples from all over the world."--Margarita D az-Andreu, author of A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past "Provides new, nuanced perspectives that will inspire studies in the materiality of identity creation and transformation in the past and its role in heritage creation in the present."--Stephen A. Brighton, author of Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora: A Transnational Approach "Thoughtful, challenging, and original. Expands the spatial and temporal parameters of the growing literature on nationalism and national identity."--Philip L. Kohl, coeditor of Selective Remembrances: Archaeology in the Construction, Commemoration, and Consecration of National Pasts The Country Where My Heart Is explores the archaeology of the period during which modern nationalism developed. While much of the previous research has focused on how governments and other institutions manipulate the archaeology of the distant past for ideological reasons, the contributors to this volume articulate what material artifacts of the modern world can reveal about the rise and fall of modern nationalism and national identities. They explore themes of colonialism, religion, political power and struggle, mythmaking, and the formation of heritage and memory not only in modern nation-states but also in places where the geographical boundaries of a "homeland" are harder to draw. Featuring case studies from northwestern and Central Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Americas, the essays examine how historical archaeology informs the concept of national identity and the formation of the modern nation and how this identity is intimately and inseparably entangled with, yet still distinct from, ethnicity and race. Alasdair Brooks, honorary visiting fellow at the University of Leicester, is the editor of The Importance of British Material Culture to Historical Archaeologies of the Nineteenth Century. Natascha Mehler, senior researcher at the German Maritime Museum and honorary reader at the University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, is the editor of Historical Archaeology in Central Europe.
Author: Alexandra Sanmark Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 9780367513863 Category : Languages : en Pages : 370
Book Description
This book brings together the cumulative results of a three-year project focused on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. In this volume we integrate a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to early medieval and medieval administrative practices, geographies, and places of assembly in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Scotland, and eastern England. This transnational perspective has enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control. In a series of richly illustrated chapters, we explore the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus. We begin with a historiographical exploration of assembly research that sets the intellectual agenda for the chapters that follow. We then examine the emergence and development of the thing in Scandinavia and its export to the lands colonised by the Norse. We consider more broadly how assembly practices may have developed at a local level, yet played a significant role in the consolidation, and at times regulation, of elite power structures. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the thing and cognate types of local and regional assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.
Author: Joris Coolen
Author: Sanmark Alexandra Sanmark
Author: Sarah Semple
Author: Anne Pedersen
Author: Dale Serjeantson
Author: Niall Sharples
Author: Beverley Ballin Smith
Author: James Graham-Campbell
Author: Alasdair Mark Brooks
Author: Alexandra Sanmark