Emergence and Downfall of Viking Towns: The Concealed Phases within the Archaeological Record
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 2017-03-22

In Viking studies one of the most attended field of research is – apart from the process of Christianisation and Scandinavia’s integration into the occidental Europe – the emergence of urbanism in a remote area where the concept of towns was never introduced before.Interestingly enough scholars agree on the fact that in Scandinavia itself only four sites can be regarded as urban at all. Despite their limited number these few sites tend to be conceived as chronologically rather monolithic entities taking the best preserved evidence as a characteristic for the whole settlements, which in fact have – mostly as a discontinuous phenomenon – have existed and change over a time period of some 250 to 300 years.The reason for this is due to the fact that the earliest traces of over time intensively settled communities are covered by metres of cultural layers and thus their spatially limited origins tend to be hard to trace down. And in some regard the same is true for their latest phases of development exposed to ploughing, erosion or modern construction. Despite these obstacles this paper wants to focus on just these hard to grasp phases in order to contribute to a more differentiated view on Viking urbanism in its chronological depth deserved.

Author - Dr. Kalmring, Sven, Centre for Blatic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA), Schleswig, Germany (Presenting author)