Coastal Communities on the Move: House and Polity Interaction in Southern Ostrobothnia, 1500 BC - AD 1

Description

This work attempts to seek new insights in understanding the archeological phenomena traditionally labelled as the western Bronze Age and the coastal Pre-Roman cultures of Finland (1500 BC - AD 1), by studying the phenomena from a socioeconomic interaction and practice oriented community perspective. The basic line of thought is that it was the everyday life of the local agents and their interactions that constituted the local communities. Communities are seen as built from the bottom up by the interaction of various local agents. The organised agents, their practices and their mutual interaction on various scales of social organisation are regarded as the central factors that created and shaped the history of the communities. Problems that are addressed concern the interrelationship between the subsistence practices, habitation practices and the social organisation of the coastal communities. 1. Introduction 7 2. Theoretical and methodological platform 13 3. The source material and its chronology 37 4. The structuration of coastal Bronze Age communities 83 5. The coastal communities in the Early Iron Age 163 6. Concluding discussion: 'durées', 'conjunctures' and the resilience of the coastal communities 181 Summary 185 References Abbreviations