Centrality - Regionality: The Social Structure of Southern Sweden during the Iron Age

Description

Iron Age research in Scandinavia has focused on studies of the significance of certain places as centres in political, economic, and religious spheres of interest. Archaeological research in recent years has shown that the Iron Age, chiefly the latter part, was a dynamic period with major changes. Danish and Swedish projects have examined this dynamism, but the discussion of central components in the understanding of the dynamic transformations that characterized the first millennium AD in Scandinavia has only marginally touched on southern Sweden. Due to intensive development, a large number of rescue excavations have taken place in southern Sweden since the early 1970s. In 1996 members of different institutes formed a group in order to initiate a research project concerning the Iron Age in the southernmost part of Sweden, including the province of Scania and the southern part of the province of Halland. The goal of the project, entitled “The Social Structure of Southern Sweden during the Iron Age”, was to study the development of society in a broad chronological perspective from 500 BC until 1000 AD. The main aim of the project was to analyse the hierarchy in the settlement structure. The overarching studies in the project concerned settlement and power structure in the Iron Age of southern Sweden and hence studies of local and regional variations. At the centre of the project was a continuous discussion of the concepts of central place and power. The landscape of power, in both its physical and its social shape, has not been sufficiently described and interpreted. The same applies to the properties that make a settlement unit into a centre. The project comprised several undertakings, involving studies differing in scope and orientation in southernmost Sweden, and studies based on work on the settlement of Uppåkra in south-west Scania. In the project the Uppåkra site serves as a catalyst because of its special structure and find material. Iron Age settlement at Uppåkra was first documented in the 1930s, but the current project did not begin until 1996. Efforts such as archaeological excavations and metal detector surveys have constituted the basis for a significant number of research tasks of a highly varied nature. The study of the Uppåkra settlement site, however, would not have been complete without a deeper understanding of settlement in the vicinity of the site. Lars Larsson: The Uppåkra Project. Preconditions, Performance and Prospects 3 Birgitta Hårdh: The Contacts of the Central Place 27 Berta Stjernquist: Detector Finds from Uppåkra as a Source of Information, illustrated by the Fibulae from the Early Iron Age 67 Lena Nilsson: Animal Husbandry in Iron Age Uppåkra 89 Mats Regnell: Charcoals from Uppåkra as Indicators of Leaf Fodder 105 Ole Stilborg: Pottery as a Source of Structural Information – Internal Structure and External Contacts of Uppåkra 0–400 AD. 117 Mats Riddersporre: Large Farms and Ordinary Villages. Perspectives on Uppåkra 139 Nils Björhem: The Development of Iron Age Construction in the Malmö Area 157 Bo Friman and Lena Hector: An Early Iron Age Settlement at Hyllie. Preliminary Results of the Excavations 179 Bengt Jacobsson: Trelleborg and the Southern Plain during the Iron Age. A Study of a Coastal Area in South-West Scania, Sweden 191 Torbjörn Brorsson: The Slavonic Feldberg and Fresendorf Pottery in Scania, Sweden 223 Tony Björk: Earth or Fire. Burial Customs as a Beginning in Exploring Regional Variations in Early Iron Age Scania 235 Lennart Carlie: The Invisible Hierarchy. Manifestations in the Halland Iron Age as Indications of a Stratified Society 243 Anna Lihammer: The Centrality of the Landscape. Elite Milieus in Eastern Blekinge during the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages 257 Bengt Söderberg: Integrating Power. Some Aspects of a Magnate’s Farm and Presumed Central Place in Järrestad, South-East Scania 283 Björn Magnusson Staaf: Places in Our Minds. Transformation and Tradition in Early Iron Age Settlements 311 Bertil Helgesson: Central Places and Regions in Scania during the Iron Age 323 Johan Callmer: Wayland. An Essay on Craft Production in the Early and High Middle Ages in Scandinavia 337