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Sejlet, skibet og kongemagten i yngre jernalder
No full textThis article examines the introduction of sail-powered vessels in Scandinavia during the Late Germanic Iron Age and discusses how this technological innovation was linked to the rise of centralised royal power. It challenges the technological determinism and evolutionist view which often dominates maritime archaeology and suggests that the use of sail should be seen as part of a deliberate strategy by the societal elite
Angrebet på Lethra: Et eksperiment om hvordan rum påvirker kamp
No full textThis article is centered around how space affects combat. This is explored through an archaeological combat experiment carried out at a reconstructed palisade in Lejre: Land of Legends in the Easter of 2023. Eight participants, adorning reconstructions of 11th century spears, swords, axes, shields, bows and arrows, divided into two teams fought multiple rounds against each other in a free form combat system, where the entire body was a valid target. Three different tactics developed through these rounds. The first tactic was for the defenders to stand in the open gate, and fight their opposers there. This tactic gave them no advantage. The second tactic was for the defenders to stand close to each side of the palisade, which made it difficult for the attackers to get through the gate, without being struck from the side or in the back. This led to the final tactic, in which the attackers didn’t attempt to go through the gate, but instead tried to fight over the fence or in between the gaps of the palisade. This experiment shows how a battlescape works. The movement and the pace of battle was heavily dictated by where it took place. The participants all tried to get an upper hand as they used their environment in their favor. Natural installations like bushes and trees served an equally big part of the defenses of the town, as the palisade. This way of letting experienced fighters explore the defensive capabilities of a defense work serves as a valuable method of gaining insight into the nature of combat at archaeological and historical sites
Pieces of Places - First Preliminary Report from the Jade Odyssey Project on the New Discoveries of the Jadeitite Quarries in the Kampos Valley on the Cycladic Island of Syros
No full textJadeitite is an extremely rare raw material, which has been highly desirable throughout human history because of its rarity, beauty, and resilience to breakage, and is thus ideal for making axes of high prestige and status. Jadeitite-polished stone tools (axes, adzes, chisels, and wedges) are an unexplored group of objects within Aegean prehistory. However, recent discoveries by researchers in our team have documented their existence at Neolithic sites all over the Aegean region. The identification of all these jadeitite axes has raised the important question of where these tools were procured and whether the source could be located. Only two jadeitite sources in the Aegean region have been cited in the geological literature. One is located on the Cycladic island of Syros, while the other is located near Harmancık in Western Anatolia. In 2021 and 2022, a Greek-Danish survey was undertaken in an attempt to locate jadeitite sources and prehistoric quarrying activities on Syros. During the investigations, it quickly became clear that the sources in the Kampos Valley, located in the northern part of Syros, were exploited during prehistoric times. This preliminary article presents the first results from these investigations of the Jade Odyssey Project from Kampos, showing unusual symbolic behaviour, with depositions in the fissures of rock boulders, combined with a highly specialized and large-scale production of preforms made to produce polished stone tools of jadeitite. These new discoveries confirm that jadeitite is a unique raw material, and the quarrying processes were associated with a complex set of symbolic behaviour, involving narratives associated with distant sources, special quarrying places, all of which were embedded in the produced and exchanged polished stone tools of jadeitite
