Maritime Culture in the Netherlands: accessing the late medieval maritime cultural landscapes of the north‐eastern Zuiderzee

This paper examines the theory and practice of the maritime cultural landscape in general, and projects the theoretical concepts and aspects involved on the highly dynamic late medieval north‐eastern Zuiderzee region in the Netherlands. The cultivation of land and marine erosion (floods and rising sea level) are considered as the main factors that caused the transformation of the physical landscape of this region from peatlands with freshwater basins into a tidal lagoon. As a consequence, multiple settlements drowned, large areas of land submerged, and culture and the landscape gradually became more maritime, giving the research area a cultural identity and dimension.     

Seal on Land, Elk at Sea: Notes on and Applications of the Ritual Landscape at the Seaboard

Ritual landscapes at sea are marked in the cognitive world of coastal people by a primary antagonism between sea and land. This contrast is negotiated by liminal 'foreign' agents, selected for their symbolic adherence to either part. The primary source of maritime culture is fishing as a survival of past hunter-gatherer societies. Forms of religious or magical management of this contrast are manifold, from recent superstitious magic to powerful symbols in ancient worship, objects, art, architecture and cult. Also described are ways of using the sea on land as a magic metaphor and a fundamental point of reference. Related dichotomies and ways of negotiating them, such as the liminal agent, exist elsewhere in the cognitive world of pre-industrial societies, so these ideas could have applications in archaeology.
© 2005 The Nautical Archaeology Society     

The Geography of Marriage

While some geographical surveys on marriage behaviour concern general marriage patterns and family systems, there are other discussions on regional variations in marriage within specific countries. This article belongs to the latter tradition, charting the regional differences in ages at marriage in Sweden from 1870 to 1900, and exploring potential determinants of the regional variation. The study builds on Sundbärg's division of Sweden into three main demographic regions, the subsequent Swedish research, and the historical-demographic studies on the determinants of marriage. The results do not fit perfectly into Sundbärg's geography but find a basic divide between the west and east/north of Sweden, mean ages at first marriage being one to one-and-a-half years higher in the west. Social norms and socioeconomic structure seem to have influenced the timing of marriage. At county level, family farming and crowding/competition over land and tenure were typically associated with later marriages, while commercial agriculture and a more diverse economy were correlated with a lower average marriage age. Also, in counties where real wages were higher, marriages usually took place earlier. Finally, results indicate that counties characterized by more secular and tolerant values were on average associated with earlier marriages.     

Contract-Workers in Swedish Agriculture,c. 1890s–1930s: a comparative study of standard of living and social status 1

In the political and medial discourse of the 1930s the contract-work system (stat/ar/systemet) was depicted as a relic of pre-modern society and contract-workers (statare) as the highly exploited lower class with no legal rights, low incomes, miserable housing conditions and a chaotic family life. This picture has dominated Swedish social history ever since, and the main argument of this article is that it has to be modified. With regard to the material standard of living, for example, employment terms, working conditions, wage levels and housing conditions, contract-workers were no worse off than other worker groups in the countryside. On the contrary, the contract-work system had its own rationality and advantages. It made it possible for young couples without land or a croft to marry and establish their own household since housing was included in the payment, and the yearly employment and large proportion of in-kind payments provided income security. However, the political discourse of the 20th century was based on the growing importance of the town and industry. The more regulated employment conditions, higher wages and better housing for industrial and urban workers became the yardstick by which the contract-workers' situation was judged. Agriculture was an economic sector in decline and the contract-work system appeared to be outdated. The abolition of the contract-work system in 1945 was definitive confirmation of the victory of modernity.     

Boats Apart. Building and Equipping an Iron-Age and Early-Medieval Ship in Northern Europe.

Archaeological ship remains usually induce a functional, i.e. technological and social, interest. This text introduces what is not 'another' aspect in fact, but rather something that runs parallel or is contained within both. Maritime societies and individuals develop cosmologies and rituals, not only strategies for sustenance, which to them are supposed to be as necessary for survival. It is an additional challenge to archaeology to explore and interpret these cognitive elements and their role in maritime cultures of the past, illustrated here by the wood, the building place, the equipment, the ship as a unit, illustrating power, ancestors, and pars-pro-toto .
© 2007 The Author