UiS Open Journals (Univ. of Stavanger)
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Comment: Interdisciplinarity? A definite maybe
Get PDFThe problems of undertaking interdisciplinary research, particularly in the fields of history and archaeology are considered. A series of five issues are identified which make it difficult to integrate studies from these two areas: knowledge mismatch, a mismatch of chronologies, an inability to match types of information, problems of the scale of study and issues around the maturity of the disciplines. Each discipline tends to enforce the particularities of its own vision, training students to its perspective and perpetuating the differences. Interdisciplinary is not, however, a doomed pursuit, and is likely to be most successful when there are clear and immediate benefits for all the parties
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age house and settlement development at Forsandmoen, south-western Norway: Tables and Figures
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Negotiating Identities and Power: Adolescent Motherhood and Child Marriage in Central Malawi
Get PDFIntroduction: despite universal efforts, child marriages still occur worldwide. However, not all child marriage unions last, and little is known about how such marriages end. Most critically, there is little information on what happens to young mothers when child marriage unions dissolve. This paper explores the experiences of adolescent mothers who were in child marriages in the cultural context of central Malawi.
Methodology: using qualitative methods, data was collected in two districts in central Malawi. One focus group discussion (FGD) was conducted with key community members (n=14) and three FGD, guided by an unstandardized interview guide, were conducted with adolescent mothers aged 15-22 years (n=15). The FGD with adolescent mothers were conducted in three groups, ranging from three to nine participants per group. In addition to this, a key informant interview was conducted with a community leader who is traditionally recognized as paramount chief (n=1). The data was analysed using a content analysis. The study applied the concept of ‘doing gender’ by West and Zimmerman (1987) in the analysis.
Results: what emerged from the data is that adolescent mothers embodied fragmented identities that are changing over time given the influence of life events. Amid different combinations of roles, several identities were observed: mother, wife, young, adolescent, girl, married, unmarried, victim of child marriage, survivor of child marriage, unemployed, employed, re-enrolled student, and school dropout. While these identities changed, gender did not, thus the changing identifications provided displays for ‘doing gender’ under a diverse set of subjectivities. Expressions of power at the micro-level were demonstrated by adolescent mothers through ‘resilience vs. perseverance’.
Conclusions: the study highlights that cultural sensitivity and responsiveness by traditional leaders, such as the chief, play a role in the empowering revisions of one’s identity by championing liberating life events through the termination of child marriage or access to girls’ education regardless of resistance
Røysundersøkelser i Løten, Hedmark
Get PDFIn 2015, the Museum of Cultural History organized a large excavation project in Løten, Hedmark with over 90 sites. During the project both clearance cairns and cairns interpreted as graves were excavated. The field at Skillingstad contained more than 100 cairns, of which approximately 40 were excavated. Although originally thought to be clearance cairns, results obtained over the course of the excavation demanded that this interpretation be reconsidered. In the area surrounding Skillingstad, four smaller cairn fields were also excavated, ranging in size from 4 to 21 cairns. Several of these were associated with small, oval, bowl-shaped fields that overlapped in time with the graves at Skillingstad. The plant macrofossil analyses returned few interesting results, but the cairns containing graves and the clearance cairns differed significantly in their micromorphological results. In addition, there were clear differences in structural organization and the relationship between the cairns in the grave and clearance fields respectively. The burial cairns were spread evenly across the site, built with uniform sized rocks and placed with respect to older monuments such that none of the monuments merged into larger units. In contrast, the clearance cairns were more randomly distributed across the site, sometimes cleared to one side of the field and at other sites in between the cultivated land and pastures. The rocks in these cairns were also more variable in size and often several cairns had grown together over time. We will also share some administrative experiences based on the reinterpretation from clearance cairns to graves at Skillingstad
Medieval and early modern ceramics in urban and rural Norway as evidence for trade within the Hanseatic world
Get PDFIn Norway, pottery from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries is always imported and mostly concentrated in the urban centres. The few finds of pottery from this period in a non-urban context can, however, shed light on the spreading of a continental or Hanseatic culture into the periphery of this country. This paper provides a broad overview of archaeological finds of pottery from Bergen and their implications as sources of cultural history. Furthermore, this paper presents various rural and underwater finds of late medieval and early modern pottery in different regions of Norway, along with a discussion of a possible interpretation of the finds as sources for Hanseatic history. 
Low German influence on the Scandinavian languages in late medieval times – some comments on loan words, word-forming, syntactic structures and names
Get PDFThere was a strong influence from the Low German language on the languages in Scandinavia in late medieval times due to the considerable economical and cultural contact and interaction between northern Germany and the Scandinavian countries in this period, especially the Hanse trade. The vocabulary was especially affected, but also the grammatical structure and names. Some place-names from south-western Norway seem to reflect Low German influence. The loans from Low German are well integrated and adjusted to the structure of the Scandinavian languages
The ships that headed north - an archaeological perspective
Get PDFInformation on ships that were used for the North Atlantic trade, mainly from Hamburg and Bremen, is scarce and, to date, has been completely derived from historical documents. This is problematic because the terms used for ship types do not represent technical definitions. As there is currently no direct archaeological evidence for the ships that headed north, finds of ships and ship timbers from other areas had been considered to offer a first glance into shipbuilding and the mechanisms of change in building methods. Two main building methods can be distinguished in the medieval period for sea-going and coastal craft: the bottom-based Bremen-type shipbuilding method and clinker shipbuilding methods. The new carvel shipbuilding method was established in the late fifteenth century in north-west Europe. The archaeological evidence shows that there was no immediate change over but that in many cases, there was instead a convergence to achieve flush carvel-built hulls. Considering the Bremen-type with its flat bottom and limited sailing abilities and the fact that the German merchants only started to participate in the North Atlantic trade in the late fifteenth century, the question arises of whether there were other technical issues that prevented them from this enterprise until they managed to gain the knowledge required to build ocean-going vessels that could withstand a journey of several weeks across the North Sea and Norwegian Sea
Bronze Age and Early Iron Age house and settlement development at Forsandmoen, south-western Norway
Get PDFThe ambition of this monograph is to analyse a limited number of topics regarding house types and thus social and economic change from the extensive material that came out of the archaeological excavation that took place at Forsandmoen (“Forsand plain”), Forsand municipality, Rogaland, Norway during the decade 1980–1990, as well as the years 1992, 1995 and 2007. The excavation was organised as an interdisciplinaryresearch project within archaeology, botany (palynological analysis from bogs and soils, macrofossil analysis) and phosphate analysis, conducted by staff from the Museum of Archaeology in Stavanger (as it was called until 2009, now part of the University of Stavanger). A large phosphate survey project had demarcaded a 20 ha settlement area, among which 9 ha were excavated using mechanical topsoil stripping to expose thehabitation traces at the top of the glaciofluvial outwash plain of Forsandmoen. A total of 248 houses could be identified by archaeological excavations, distributed among 17 house types. In addition, 26 partly excavated houses could not be classified into a type. The extensive house material comprises three types of longhouses, of which there are as many as 30–40 in number, as well as four other longhouse types, of which there are only 2–7 in number. There were nine other house types, comprising partly small dwelling houses and partly storage houses, of which there were 3–10 in number. Lastly, there are 63 of the smallest storage house, consisting of only four postholes in a square shape. A collection of 264 radiocarbon dates demonstrated that the settlement was established in the last part of the 15th century BC and faded out during the 7th–8th century AD, encompassing the Nordic Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. As a number of houses comprising four of the house types were excavated with the same methods in the same area by the same staff, it is a major goal of this monograph to analyse thoroughly the different featuresof the houses (postholes, wall remains, entrances, ditches, hearths, house-structure, find-distribution) and how they were combined and changed into the different house types through time. House material from different Norwegian areas as well as Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands is included in comparative analyses to reveal connections within the Nordic area. Special attention has been given to theinterpretation of the location of activity areas in the dwelling and byre sections in the houses, as well as the life expectancy of the two main longhouse types. Based on these analyses, I have presented a synthesis in 13 phases of the development of the settlement from Bronze Age Period II to the Merovingian Period. This analysis shows that, from a restricted settlement consisting of one or two small farms in the Early BronzeAge, it increases slightly throughout the Late Bronze Age to 2–3 solitary farms to a significantly larger settlement consisting of 3–4 larger farms in the Pre-Roman Iron Age. From the beginning of the early Roman Iron Age, the settlement seems to increase to 8–9 even larger farms, and through the late Roman Iron Age, the settlement increases to 12–13 such farms, of which 6–7 farms are located so close together that they would seem to be a nucleated or village settlement. In the beginning of the Migration Period, there were 16–17 farms, each consisting of a dwelling/byre longhouse and a workshop, agglomerated in an area of 300 x 200 m where the farms are arranged in four E–W oriented rows. In addition, two farms were situated 140 m NE of the main settlement. At the transition to the Merovingian Period, radiocarbon dates show that all but two of the farms were suddenly abandoned. At the end of that period, the Forsandmoen settlement was completely abandoned. The abandonment could have been caused by a combination of circumstances such as overexploitation in agriculture, colder climate, the Plague of Justinian or the collapse of the redistributive chiefdom system due to the breakdown of the Roman Empire. The abrupt abandonment also coincides with a huge volcanic eruption or cosmic event that clouded the sun around the whole globe in AD 536–537. It is argued that the climatic effect on the agriculture at this latitude could induce such a serious famine that the settlement, in combination with the other possible causes, was virtually laid waste during the ensuing cold decade AD 537–546.