Dating Ancient Burial Mounds in Denmark – Revealing Problematic Ancient Charcoal

The National Museum of Denmark and the Department of Geography at the University of Copenhagen have collaborated on a project investigating burial mounds near early Medieval churches. The aim was to identify a possible continuity in cult sites across the shift to Christianity in the late Viking Age. Charcoal samples from 18 mounds were radiocarbon dated but the results showed they were far older than expected. Control dating undertaken on burial mounds of known age confirmed that charcoal in the mound fill can at least be up to 3000 years older than the mound itself. As charcoal can survive in the surface soil layer for millennia, in spite of ploughing, bioturbation and frost, it may also dominate the charcoal pool of the grass or heather turfs used in the mound construction. Therefore, the article concludes, charcoal cannot be used to securely date archaeological features built with turfs and it is important to be aware of the possible presence of very old charcoal when selecting material for dating archaeological features, even those which otherwise would be judged unaffected by material from earlier archaeological periods.     

THE FUTURE'S PAST: POLITICS OF TIME AND TERRITORY AMONG DAKELH FIRST NATIONS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

ABSTRACT. This article examines contemporary political movements among Dakelh First Nations in British Columbia that have challenged Western modernity's fixation with a future achieved through industrial progress. Aboriginal people have been especially assertive in politicizing the connections between time and place through the display and performance of memory in forms as diverse as life history narratives, the cultural landscape, media and grass-roots development projects. Such constructions suggest that future developments in traditional lands must come through an engagement with the past - its meanings, practices, and significance in the particular places of cultural and economic production. I explore how Dakelh territories serve as sites for imagining and enacting alternative political and development agendas. I argue that these territories have increasingly become spaces forged in the margins of modernity's binary oppositions of self-other, nature-culture and future-past. This finding is not meant to marginalize indigenous territories conceptually or politically, but rather to recognize their centrality to contemporary provincial politics where margins - both geographic and discursive - have become central locations for pursuing sovereignty over land and nation.     

A NEW BRONZE AGE HOARD FROM MARIESMINDE AT LANGESKOV ON FUNEN,DENMARK

A hoard was discovered at Mariesminde near the centre of the Danish island Funen in 2003 during trial excavations. A pot containing 27 bronzes was later excavated in the museum laboratory. The bronzes were stacked disorderly, with a large piece of sheet bronze at the bottom. The objects consisted of broken rings, several so-called ‘Hohlwulstringe’ or hollow rings, a socketed axe, plus 13 casting cakes and three casting runners. No less than four rings are types new to Scandinavia and reflect connections with the Italian peninsula and further away. The hoard's mixture of broken objects, casting runners and cakes classifies it as a scrap hoard. It is dated to the Bronze Age period VI (Montelius), prominently indicated by the hollow rings. The findspot of the hoard was only c. 200 m from the well-known period IV hoard Mariesminde I with the largest collection of gold vessels from Funen. The metal analyses open new perspectives and indicate an origin in the Alps or the Erzgebirge for most of the collection.