Various transcultural perspectives, including skeumorphism

The Bronze Age was first acknowledged as a separate period, and thus as an object of study, in 1836 when Christian Jürgensen Thomsen published his famous three-agesystem. The Bronze Age was here sandwiched in between the Stone Age and the Iron Age. The latter periods built on indigenous materials of stone and iron. The Bronze Age, by contrast, was founded on an artificial, and thus truly innovative, alloy of copper and tin, which were traded into metal-poor Scandinavia from metal-rich regions of central Europe. Thomsen's system was virtually Darwinian in its evolutionary logic and became the foundation of all later research, which has progressed mostly in leaps.

diverging economic and social trajectories in the Nordic Bronze Age, 2025

In this contribution I trace how long-term economic processes unfolded during the Bronze Age in Scandinavia creating both diversity and homogeneity. How did processes of change in one region of southern Scandinavia impact other regions? What kept together the different regions of Scandinavia within a shared Nordic idiom; how much was shared, and how much was different? These questions lead on to the integrating role of ideology: how did ritual display change direction during the Bronze Age, and what were the implication of these processes for social and political change? It is demonstrated that when contradictions arose during the Late Bronze Age, between an unsustainable economic practice and existing social and political practices, religious ontologies were mobilised in an expansive ritual display to suppress social and economic reform. Instead, elites increasingly separated themselves in larger kingdoms or super chiefdoms where social connections were with other elites, rather than with the commoners who were impoverished and suppressed.

Scandinavia has the largest concentration of Bronze Age Rock Art in Europe

The breakthrough of the Nordic Bronze Age (NBA) c. 1600 BC as a koiné within Bronze Age Europe can be historically linked to the Carpathian Basin. Nordic distinctiveness entailed an entanglement of cosmology and warriorhood, albeit represented through different media in the hotspot zone (bronze) and in the northern zone (rock). In a Carpathian crossroad between the Eurasian Steppes, the Aegean world and temperate Europe during this time, a transcultural assemblage coalesced, fusing both tangible and intangible innovations from various different places. Superior warriorhood was coupled to beliefs in a tripartite cosmology, including a watery access to the netherworld while also exhibiting new fighting technologies and modes of social conduct. This transculture became creatively translated in a range of hot societies at the onset of the Middle Bronze Age. In southern Scandinavia, weaponry radiated momentous creativity that drew upon Carpathian originals, contacts and a pool of Carpathian ideas, but ultimately drawing on emergent Mycenaean hegemonies in the Aegean. This provided the incentive for a cosmology-rooted resource from which the NBA could take its starting point. Keywords: Bronze Age, culture change, transculture, cosmology, creative translation, hot society

The authors present and discuss two segregated metal workshop sites at the Hunn burial ground in Østfold, south-east Norway, and address topics like the scale and character of the production and the cultural context of the finds. One of these sites, the Midtfeltet site, repre- sents one of the most extensive Bronze Age metallurgical workshops in Scandinavia. The site is located in a region that has yielded comparatively few bronze artefacts, and illustrates a paradoxical trend in Norwegian Bronze Age archaeology: the dislocation between production of bronze objects and their final deposition. The Bronze Age workshops and monuments at Hunn are situated in an area with a Late Neolithic history, which after the Bronze Age continued to be used for burials and rituals. Hunn is situated by a natural harbor, and has good conditions for embarking inland on rivers and documented prehistoric tracks. Occurrences of unalloyed copper in a Bronze Age context may be considered an indication of trade in raw metals, which is also indicated by residues on crucibles at other central workshop sites in Scandinavia. Hunn was very probably, with its two workshop areas and signs of specialized production of, among other things, preforms, a regional center or aggregation site for craft production and exchange. A high degree of overlap between Nordic metalworking sites in terms of metallurgical know-how, refractory technology and artefact typology, but also sym- bolic decoration, is noted. This is indicative of ambulat- ing, specialized metalworkers who had the aggregation site as their primary arena. A link to the Baltic is seen in the locally manufactured Lausitz-inspired pottery and an early cremation burial at Midtfeltet. The article focusses on the results of small-scale excavation campaigns at Midtfeltet in 1996–2006, covering an area of altogether c. 400 m2. The site produced a substantial amount of clay refractories, metalworking debris, flint, animal bone and pottery, 14C-dated to c. 1300–700 BC. Keywords: Bronze Age; south-east Norway; metal produc- tion; refractory finds; cross-craft technologies; exchange networks; maritime trade

The most marked prehistoric human impact of southern Scandinavia occurs in the middle part of the Bronze Age. It coincides with a complex climate oscillation dated between ca. 1200-900 BC. This landscape transformation is evaluated from an interregional perspective and compared to the preceding and succeeding periods. Prior to climatic oscillations a large number of barrows were built, containing many bronze grave goods, which legitimized the ritual and social significance of chiefly lineages. During the climate oscillation, monuments and marked symbols are lacking. Thereafter, a new legitimization crisis occurs as new burial mounds are built.

Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 2016

ZusammenfassungDie Autoren präsentieren zwei separierte Metallwerkplätze auf dem Gräberfeldareal von Hunn in Østfold, südöstliches Norwegen. Diskutiert werden Produktionsumfang, -charakter und kultureller Kontext der Funde. Eine dieser Örtlichkeiten, der Fundplatz von Midtfeltet, repräsentiert den für Skandinavien umfangreichsten bronzezeitlichen Metallwerkplatz. Die Fundstellen befinden sich in einer Region, aus der kaum vergleichbare Bronzeartefakte vorliegen, was aber auf die paradoxe Situation innerhalb der norwegischen Bronzezeit hinweist, dass Örtlichkeiten der Herstellung und Verarbeitung von Bronze nicht mit jenen Regionen zusammenfallen, in denen die Mehrzahl bronzener Artefakte ihren Hauptniederschlag fanden. Die bronzezeitlichen Werkstätten und Monumente in Hunn liegt in einer vom späten Neolithikum geprägten Region, in der auch nach der Bronzezeit noch weitere Bestattungen erfolgten und Rituale durchgeführt wurden. Vorkommen unverhütteten Kupfers in bronzezeitlichen Kont...

Current Swedish Archaeology 26, 2019

Gjutningens arenor: Metallhantverkets rumsliga, sociala och politiska organisation i södra Skandinavien under bronsåldern [Casting Spaces: The Spatial, Social and Political Organisation of Metalworking in Southern Scandinavia during the Bronze Age] Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 75 Stockholm: Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies Stockholm University 2018 299 pages with English summary

AI

The Bronze Age of Northwestern Scandinavia" has three main purposes: 1) the written evaluation of individual artefacts along with plates and catalogues, should fill a long standing gap in the Nordic and European Bronze Age database -Northwestern Scandinavia; 2) it is an holistic interpretive attempt at the Bronze Age as history, and at the integration of NW Scandinavia in a larger Bronze Age world without loosing sight of the particularities of local data; 3) it is an attempt to face up to critique of modernity from an archeological perspective, and thus to do archaeology in light of the extended human mind and without simplistic use of "society" and the "social". As point of departure I take the ongoing critique of the modern within philosophy, and natural and social sciences: the dichotomies and paradoxes linked to nature, culture, social, body, mind, word, and world. This critique is evaluated from a strictly archaeological point of view, and three methodological gates are sketched, leading to an archaeology compatible with the idea that the human mind is plastic and extends into the body and into the surrounding world. These three methodologies treat artefacts as societies, as minds and as acts. After reconsidering bronze artefacts as archaeological data in light of this, I formulate three specific strategies for Parts I-III of the thesis. The first strategy in Part I explores webs or networks wide in space and time, and focus on bronze as societies or types and as a source of information on spatially extensive networks and a historical rhythm of time. 523 metal artefacts and casting moulds are given a basic typological, spatial and chronological assessment. This culminates in a presentation of the Bronze Age as a series of maps of distribution and networks. Diachronic change and the integration of NW Scandinavia in a larger geographic context are given priority. The second strategy in Part II explores webs dense in time and space, and takes on bronze as congealed action. Now the focus is on the transformation of bronze through casting and displacement of bronze through long distance mobility. The aim is to localise and close in on a series of non-human elements involved in these events, and to close in on human skills and sensory experience. The third strategy in Part III closes in on explanation in archaeology. I argue that explaining is an act of distributing agency/the ability to influence, among human and non-human participants in prehistoric networks. The third strategy and the thesis culminates in three chapters (9-11) that seek explanation in the Bronze Age from different points of view, scales of space and rhythms of time. These three chapters are also meant as a demonstration of what can be gained by rigorous adherence to the methodologies sketched in chapter 1, and thus also as a test of the project writ large. In chapter 9 I pick up the threads from Part I and explore further the Bronze Age as history as a diachronic series of wide webs, and I finally present explanations to these dynamic networks. The value of fur from the Norwegian alpine mountains and Fennoscandinavia in Central Europe and the Mediterranean is set higher compared to earlier studies. One significant claim is that the networks in question should not be classified as down-the-line but as directional, intentional networks related to trade in fur. In relation to the critique of the modern, this chapter is an attempt to do justice to the archaeological horizon of experience, to aim explanation onto the puzzles given by traditional archaeological tools (typology, spatial distribution, drawings, maps). In chapter 10 I pick up the threads from Part II and explore further aspects of sensory experience within networks of single events, primarily events that involved bronze. In relation to the critique of the modern, this is an attempt to do justice to mindful, sensing and skilled humans in their dealings with metal in the Bronze Age. In chapter 11 I explore a third rhythm of time, that of the human biography. In light of the critique of the modern, this is an attempt to explore the becoming, plastic human being with a mind immersed in matter of body and surrounding world. The biographical perspective also allows me to re-encounter a series of subjects familiar to Bronze Age research, and to finally face up to social anthropology: specialization, political economy, feasting, power, death rituals, and social organization. In chapter 12, the conclusion, I summarize the main results of the thesis, point at some consequences for other geographic areas and periods of time, and sketches elements for new directions in Bronze Age research.

The Archaeology of Northern Europe (TANE 1), 2020

This innovative volume draws on a range of materials and places to explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The Bronze Age in Northern Europe was a place of diversity and contrast, an era that saw movements and changes not just of peoples, but of cultures, beliefs, and socio-political systems, and that led to the forging of ontological ideas materialized in landscapes, bodies, and technologies. Drawing on a range of materials and places, the innovative contributions gathered here in this volume explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The contributions explore how and why society evolved over time, from the changing nature of sea travel to new technologies in house building, and from advances in lithic production to evolving burial practices and beliefs in the afterlife. This edited collection honours the ground-breaking research of Professor Christopher Prescott, an outstanding figure in the study of the Bronze Age north, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field, and to shed new light on a Bronze Age full of contrasts and connections.

In: Life and afterlife in the Nordic Bronze Age (eds Tornberg, A., Svensson, A. & Apel, J), pp. 11-26. , 2022

Research dealing with the Scandinavian Bronze Age period has often been related to the notion of a society organized around metal trade, both in terms of social organization and networks. The central area for this development has been located to the southernmost parts of Scandinavia. However, the rich southern material in the form of a combination of metals, monumental mounds and longhouses is not relatable to most other parts of the Nordic area. In this paper we outline a study of several co-existing Bronze Ages, with the purpose of understanding the distribution and chronology of the vast and varied archaeological record of the Nordic area without any reference to a central area in the south. We argue for the possibility of studying Bronze Age movements, contacts, networks, and social organization directly based on the archaeological material at hand, rather than in relation to the norm set by the southern Bronze Age paradigm. This enables possibilities of studying intersections of archaeological material that change in relation to both time and space.

Copyrighted material-no unorthorized reproduction in any medium.

New Perspectives on the Bronze Age. Proceedings of the 13th Nordic Bronze Age Symposium held in Gothenburg 9th to 13th June 2015, edited by S. Bergerbrant and A. Wessman., 2017

This article explores the construction of boundaries between local group identities through the burial practice of south-west Norway in the Early Bronze Age. It is argued that active choices were made in the consolidation of groups that had both direct and indirect effects on choices made by neighbouring groups. By drawing on theoretical tools from poststructuralism and anthropology, boundary maintenance is detected in the archaeological record. This is investigated through the construction of burials, treatment of the deceased and gender categorisation. This is set against a background of a highly dynamic and interconnected region with ties to a broader Nordic Bronze Age world. The patterns found point to a region where choices in burial practice reflect real ongoing developments in the social organisation of local Bronze Age societies.

Praehistorische Zeitschrift, 2020

Through a multi-scalar approach using archaeological and statistical methods this paper investigates identity through a comparative study of 270 female gendered burials from Jutland, Funen, Bornholm and Northern Germany. The understanding of the societal structure in the Bronze Age is based on a binary gender system and the variation within these gender categories is emphasised as highly significant for our understanding of gendered social roles in the Early Nordic Bronze Age (NBA). This paper demonstrates that elite women in Early NBA (c.1600–1100 BCE) held high social standing as well as holding multi-facetted social roles, reflecting both status and identity but with a change in status observed from NBA period II to III (c. 1300 BCE onwards). Network investigations of the female graves revealed that one armring in particular was dominant in the material and is seen a key identity marker for Early Nordic Bronze Age women. Further, it is concluded that analyses of object-type combi...

The Baltic in the Bronze Age: Regional patterns, interactions and boundaries, 2022

Adoranten , 2021

In this article, we employ an interdisciplinary approach to explore the possibility that Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art was created by warrior-trader secret societies as part of the ritual practices associated with long distance exchange activities. Additionally, we suggest that secret societies may have been responsible for the creation and maintenance of a Supra Regional Network that linked the Limfjord/Jutland and Tanum/Bohuslän areas together in Western Scandinavia. (Fig 1). In short, we propose that rock art depictions of warriors represent individuals engaging in activities and rituals conducted by secret societies. Interestingly, these warrior images are often accompanied by depictions of supernatural beings, large ships, the wearing of ritual gear especially with birdlike attributes, bi-horned helmets, masks, and other exotic items characteristic of secret societies

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society

This article tracks the formation of the rich and socially complex Nordic Bronze Age (NBA), c. 2000–1500 bc, by applying a scalar methodology and using the entrepôt and early metalworking site of Pile in Scania as its point of departure. By regarding the Bronze Age as an ancient example of globalisation, Island Melanesia at the outskirts of contemporary globalisation is first examined to provide an analogue to the Nordic entrepreneurial and maritime culture into which metallurgy was first adopted. How did this northern margin become ‘Bronze Age’, and what impact did its inclusion have? Various scales, from local to Bronze-Age-global were found to intersect in the Pile hoard, and in similar sites near and far. By c. 2000 bc, metals and other commodities travelled along well-established local, regional, and super-regional networks, which even incorporated the British Isles and Únětician hubs at the Middle Elbe–Saale. Back in Scandinavia, metal and metal-related culture provided a comp...

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