The application of numerical techniques to insect assemblages from the site of Stóraborg,Iceland

The problems of interpretation of many overlapping species lists of fossil assemblages are discussed using the example of insect faunas from a late medieval farm site in southern Iceland. Numerical techniques were employed, principally those available within the CLUSTAN package, and it was concluded that a considerable refinement in interpretation was achieved. Such quantitative procedures are suitable for groups other than fossil insects but their employment cannot be regarded as a substitute for, rather than an adjunct to, a sound ecological approach.     

Intervention methods in land disputes

Archival data, survey and interviews were used to investigate mediation activities among judges in the Norwegian Land Consolidation Court. The court handles land issue disputes among farmers in rural Norway. Despite having both planning skill and court power the judges spend a considerable amount of time mediating the disputes. In fairly integrative planning disputes they increase their mediation efforts with conflict level, case size and complexity. Mediation helped to reduce objections to the plan implemented. In more distributive boundary disputes they mediated less, and to a lesser degree varied efforts with case characteristics. However, settlements were achieved in the less conflictive, smaller and less complex cases. Considerable variations in mediation styles were found among the judges. Those with settlement oriented behaviour achieved more settlements than those that focused on facilitating communication. Implications are discussed.     

Moving Closer to the Fire: Heat Transformations and Bucket‐Shaped Pots in Burials

Archaeological discourse reveals an appreciation of the potentially deeply intertwined relationship between the life histories of human beings and material culture. I argue that the intimacy between lived experience and things is a vital source for understanding symbolic meaning – that the bodily experienced everyday interaction enables close associations between humans and material culture, in this case bucket‐shaped pots in graves. The consistent representation in Migration Period burials from western Norway has led to the contention that there are reasons to believe that there may have been only one bucket‐shaped pot for each person buried. Provenance and technological influence is often demonstrated as a function of surface similarity between bucket‐shaped pots and other material forms, leading to notions of ‘wandering’ surfaces which become passively copied templates. As a result, causality is left elsewhere than in the technological choices made and the factors involved in shaping the pots' social lives after manufacture. An emphasis on heat transformations and ceramic technology within a wider social context enables us to discuss bucket‐shaped pots in burials both as symbolic elements in material assemblages and as ontological metaphors intimately associated with the deceased.     

Recent Norwegian archaeological publications

The part of the Helg?y Project presented here deals with the Norwegian and Sami populations in Helg?y from their supposed immigration to the Region about 13/1400 AD to approximately 1700. Some findings and the methods developed by the project to establish them will be presented, the question of how to distinguish Sami from Norwegian settlements in historical and pre‐historical times being central in the study of North Norway.     

Some reflections on the study of iron age burial customs in Norway

A reappraisal of the material from Norwegian grave finds is necessary, with the primary object of throwing light on the burial custom itself. The study should be based on a minimum of uniform criteria. This will allow direct comparison between the various parts of the country and the different periods.

Those surveys of Norwegian burial customs published to date are no longer in agreement with existing facts.

If such studies are not undertaken, the stagnation evident in the research into the Norwegian Iron Age will only increase.