Ministry of Culture Research Portal
Not a member yet
31519 research outputs found
Sort by
The Mandate for Speculation:Responding to uncertainty in archaeological thinking
No full textThe aim of the article is to reframe speculation from being seen as synonymous with unacademic conjecture, or as a means for questioning consensus and established narratives, to becoming a productive practical engagement with the archaeological and responding to its intrinsic uncertainties. In the first part of the article, we offer a review of speculation in the history of archaeological reasoning. In the second part, we proceed to discussing ways of embracing the speculative mandate, referring back to our engagements with the art/archaeology project Ineligible and reflections on how to work with the unknowns and uncertainties of archaeology. In the third and last part, we conclude by making the case for fertilizing the archaeological potential nested in the empirical encounter, creating more inceptions than conclusions, fostering ambiguities, contradictions and new spaces of experiential inquiry. This leads us to suggest that—when working with the archaeological—speculation should be seen not only as a privilege, but also as an obligation, due to the inherent and inescapable uncertainties of the discipline. In other words, archaeology has been given a mandate for speculation through its material engagements
Fabelagtige fibler og en forgyldt ringknop:– et udbytterigt år i detektorarkæologien
Get PDFMetallerne er i hobetal raslet ind på den danefæ-ansvarliges skrivebord i 2023. Særligt er antallet af de såkaldte fibler (dragtspænder) i usædvanlig fremgang. Museets registrering af næbfibler og korte ligearmede fibler fra yngre germansk jernalder er fordoblet i antal i løbet af ét år. Derudover er der for første gang blevet fundet en forgyldt ringknop i museets ansvarsområde. En lille dims med kolossal udsagnsværdi, der engang var meget få forundt at prale med
The steady loss – Palynological investigation into the main triggers of changes in vegetation and pastoral activity during the Norse period in southern Greenland
No full textPastoral farming formed a key element of Norse subsistence strategies in South Greenland but with climatic changes of the Little Ice Age they may have reached their limit. Most recently, studies into hydrological changes across the Norse period (10th–15th century AD) revealed a severe drying trend that was coincident with the Norse demise during the early to mid-15th century AD. This study examines lake sediments from a central area of the Norse Eastern Settlement in Greenland. By means of palynology this study investigates whether climatic changes were responsible for decreasing hay yields and a consequent lack of winter fodder. The results suggest that droughts were likely only minor drivers of vegetation change. In fact, we demonstrate a complex entanglement of cooling trends, substrate impoverishment in the catchment of the sampled lake and human adaptation processes. The latter is manifested in a shift in usage of the farm towards a shieling/ dairy production. We conclude that the high amount of labour required to maintain hay yields while counterbalancing the lack of soil nutrients and the shortening of the growing season could be among the many driving forces in the process of Norse farming reorganization in South Greenland. Furthermore, the results allow for the discussion of a potential first palynological evidence of Norse water management in South Greenland
Quantifying the last 7500 years of land-use changes on the island of Karmøy, southwestern Norway, with focus on three periods with monumental burial mounds
No full textThe northern part of the island Karmøy in southwestern Norway contain one of Scandinavia’s largest assemblages of monumental burial mounds. The size and rich grave goods of the mounds demonstrate three separate periods of elite societies from the Bronze Age Period II/III (1300 BCE) until the final ship graves were constructed in the Merovingian Period (550–800 CE). In this study, the vegetation history and land-use practices are reconstructed from 5500 BCE to 2000 CE, with a focus on the three phases with burial mounds. We examine whether the elite societies formed due to a surplus in the agro-pastoral economy or due to the islands strategic position near the Karmsund Strait. The regional scale vegetation is reconstructed using REVEALS and the local scale vegetation is based on a pollen record from Lake Bøvatn and the LOVE model. The results show that the breakthrough of agriculture with cereal production started in the region c. 2000 BCE with a reduction in forest cover 500–700 years before the first monumental burial mounds were constructed. This agricultural practice probably created the surplus needed for the development of the first elite society. Woodland cover was reduced to c. 50 % on a regional scale between c. 1 and 500 CE (representing the second phase of burial mounds), while on a local scale around Lake Bøvatn the woodland cover was absent. A simultaneous increase in animal husbandry and cereal cultivation, suggests population expansion. During the third phase, between c. 650 and 820 CE, the subsistence strategy appears to be more focused on animal husbandry, which is less labour intensive. The pollen composition from one of the ship graves, Storhaug, indicates that the surrounding landscape was dominated by heather and grassland. The strategic location near the Karmsund Strait became increasingly important over time, especially in the period corresponding to the third phase of burial mounds. This study shows the complex relationship between physical landscape properties and the development of elite societies as well as the benefit of combining archaeological and palaeoecologial data to study past societal change.The northern part of the island Karmøy in southwestern Norway contain one of Scandinavia’s largest assemblages of monumental burial mounds. The size and rich grave goods of the mounds demonstrate three separate periods of elite societies from the Bronze Age Period II/III (1300 BCE) until the final ship graves were constructed in the Merovingian Period (550–800 CE). In this study, the vegetation history and land-use practices are reconstructed from 5500 BCE to 2000 CE, with a focus on the three phases with burial mounds. We examine whether the elite societies formed due to a surplus in the agro-pastoral economy or due to the islands strategic position near the Karmsund Strait. The regional scale vegetation is reconstructed using REVEALS and the local scale vegetation is based on a pollen record from Lake Bøvatn and the LOVE model. The results show that the breakthrough of agriculture with cereal production started in the region c. 2000 BCE with a reduction in forest cover 500–700 years before the first monumental burial mounds were constructed. This agricultural practice probably created the surplus needed for the development of the first elite society. Woodland cover was reduced to c. 50 % on a regional scale between c. 1 and 500 CE (representing the second phase of burial mounds), while on a local scale around Lake Bøvatn the woodland cover was absent. A simultaneous increase in animal husbandry and cereal cultivation, suggests population expansion. During the third phase, between c. 650 and 820 CE, the subsistence strategy appears to be more focused on animal husbandry, which is less labour intensive. The pollen composition from one of the ship graves, Storhaug, indicates that the surrounding landscape was dominated by heather and grassland. The strategic location near the Karmsund Strait became increasingly important over time, especially in the period corresponding to the third phase of burial mounds. This study shows the complex relationship between physical landscape properties and the development of elite societies as well as the benefit of combining archaeological and palaeoecologial data to study past societal change
Place, Encounter, and the Making of Communities:The Lower Sirwan/Upper Diyala River Valley from Prehistory to the Iron Age
No full textThis book sketches the first archaeological history of the lower Sirwan/upper Diyala river valley of north-east Iraq and adjacent landscapes over a period of c. 12,000 years, from the earliest signs of human presence until the mid-first millennium BCE, based on data gathered between 2013 and 2023 by the Sirwan Regional Project (SRP).The central research objective of the SRP is to move beyond traditional historical topoi and their predominantly external and state-centric perspectives that have dominated narratives of the region thus far. Instead, we develop an in-depth, archaeological understanding of the nature of the region’s past communities, their cultural and economic practices, the modes of socio-political organisation they developed, adopted, and rejected, and their long-term developments.In order to reconstruct past Sirwan lifeways, the book interweaves regional-scale datasets with the results of ongoing and completed excavations at the Late Chalcolithic site of Shakhi Kora and the Late Bronze to Early Iron Age site of Kani Masi, as well as the results of a wide range of archaeological, Assyriological, art historical, and archaeometric analyses
