THE IRON AGE URNFIELD TRADITION OF SOUTHWESTERN JUTLAND,DENMARK

This study examines two urnfields, their development, burial rituals, grave goods and the cremated remains in a renewed analysis of the Danish Urnfield Tradition. The osteological investigation reveals a very high proportion of children's graves in these communal burial sites. Individual expression and demonstration of status are muted in burial rituals adhering to strict norms, although differences between age categories show through variations in the size of a burial monument. The use of CT scans and a detailed analysis of all artefacts provide evidence of the ritualized breaking of urns and the retrieval of bones from graves. Such retrieval of bones together with the layout and development of urnfields demonstrate the importance placed on the ancestors in the Early Pre-Roman Iron Age. The inconspicuous burials, together with the incorporation of all age categories, suggest that the focus of these burial communities is on a relational rather than individual identity.     

Crossing the Maelstrom: New Departures in Viking Archaeology

Journal of Archaeological Research - This paper reviews the achievements and challenges of archaeological research on Viking Age northern Europe and explores potential avenues for future research....     

Reproducing the indigenous: John Møller’s studio portraits of Greenlanders in context

Between 1889 and 1922, John Møller (1867–1935), the first professional Greenlandic photographer, produced more than 3000 glass plate negatives documenting life in Western Greenland around the turn of the twentieth century. Rooted in an internal understanding of self, Møller’s photographs played an important part in the formation of a contemporary image of Greenlandic indigenous identity. At the same time, Møller’s photographic practice was arguably entangled in and delimited by a historical reality that was structured by colonial relations of power. This paper examines the social and art-historical contexts of Møller’s work, focusing in particular on a selection of his formal studio portraits. My reading of these portraits suggests a case in which conflicting impulses coincide. On the one hand, Møller produced images that played out the “ethnographic convention”, a European form of representation dating back to the sixteenth century used for the documentation of non-Western indigenous peoples as specimens. However, in acting out that convention, Møller’s photographs hint at a subtle, progressive building-up of identity that reclaimed images of Greenlanders for themselves, and turned an originally negative, external image of indigeneity into a positive sense of self.     

Social meaning in the English lesser gentry house: a West Yorkshire study

This paper analyses the archaeological and documentary evidence from three West Yorkshire houses—Calverley Old Hall, Shibden Hall and Oakwell Hall—to re-evaluate narratives of gentry emulation in 16th- and 17th-century English housebuilding. Gentry houses have long been absorbed into the literature of elite country houses, with homes of the lesser gentry serving primarily as emulative examples of national architectural and social trends. This paper suggests a more nuanced interpretation of these homes as sites of multi-faceted household relationships, where the inhabitants consciously incorporated and resisted elite trends and used space to establish and maintain control.     

Pre‐Modern Boathouses: a maritime perspective from northern Norway

Most Scandinavian boathouses predating the Reformation (AD 1537) are located in Norway, starting in the Early Iron Age, and a majority are found in the north. Following a critical review of Norwegian boathouse studies from a historical and regional perspective, current research themes in northern Norway are discussed. Boathouses are viewed as multifunctional entities providing insights into the marine economy, social organization, and ethnic interaction between Sami and Norse populations. A more balanced and holistic perspective is needed in which boathouses are seen as a central component of the maritime cultural landscape with uses extending substantially beyond boat storage. © 2012 The Authors     

Transurban interconnectivities: an essay on the interpretation of the revolutions of 1848

This essay discusses the interpretation of the revolutionary situations of 1848 in light of recent debates on interconnectivity in history. The concept of transurban interconnectivities is proposed as the most precise concept to capture the nature of interconnectivity in 1848. It is argued that political models circulating on a European scale at the time provided the ‘knowledge resources’ that were appropriated by urban political activists across Europe. These circulating resources were appropriated by political activists as means of political mobilisation in their particular local urban context. It is argued that circulating political communication accounts for similarities with respect to political agenda, organisational form and political repertoire evident in urban settings across Europe. This argument is supported by a series of examples of local organisation and local appropriations of liberalism, radicalism and nationalism in 1848. In the concluding paragraph, the limitations of the notion of urban–rural interconnectivity are discussed in order to clarify the nature of transurban interconnectivity.