REGIONAL AND SOCIOPOLITICAL CHANGES IN NORTHWESTERN SCANDINAVIA IN THE EARLY BRONZE AGE
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-10-29

The diverse landscape that makes up the northwestern coast of Scandinavia, stretching from Vest-Agder in the south to Troms in the north, would have created natural difficulties for groups trying to obtain large-scale political control. As such, the social organisation along the northwestern coastline was seemingly highly varied, from smaller groups and single households to more specialised societies reminiscing of a chiefdom-like structure. This paper explores changes in the sociopolitical development in northwestern Scandinavia in Early Bronze Age. These changes are shown to have been triggered by multiple factors, which encompass increased use of the seaway, adaptation to the local ecology, as well as interregional developments and incorporation. An extensive archaeological corpus, consisting of settlement and burial patterns, lithics, metal, and rock art, and patterns of diachronic, regional and societal differences is investigated. This allows me to identify a more nuanced picture of how societies along the northwestern coast organised themselves and their connections with concurrent pan-regional processes. Within this system, it is shown that regional societies rise and fall depending on their successful exploitation of local resources, ecology and sociopolitical strategies. However, even though developing societies are to a large extent structured by local conditions, interregional developments have impacted them in several ways. I argue that the development of societies cannot be seen in a unilinear manner, and neither can the development of one socio-historical region be understood in its entirety without the addressing interaction between multiple neighbouring regions as well as pan-regional processes.


Author(s): Austvoll, Knut Ivar (Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo)