VESTLAND CAULDRONS WITH CREMATION RESIDUES
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-29

Vestland cauldrons produced in Germania Inferior were frequently used with cremation residues during the Roman Iron Age and the Migration period in Scandinavian contexts. A local and comparative approach has brought a number of nuances to be detected in the material. This concerns changes in the cauldrons themselves as well as details in the burial constructions they comprise. Examples are given from North Sweden and from Western Scandinavia, the latter with the majority of the burials. Small material changes have been noticed in cauldrons and in burials, and also imitations of provincial items in different materials are present. All of these material traces are tactile expressions of far reaching and changing contacts, encounters and mutual influences far beyond the frontier of Limes. For example are extra handles added locally to the cauldrons, and they have frequently been extensively mended several times. No direct contact with Roman area is supposed, but the cauldron material shows signs of how an item can travel far away through centuries, be repeatedly mended, and be transformed over geographical distances. The Vestland cauldron is supposed to have been transformed from military canteen to burial urn. Much is written on Vestland cauldrons, but a micro study and new questions have revealed still new details on the cauldrons, their surroundings as well as on the arrangements they are part of.


Author(s): Hjorungdal, Tove (University of Gothenburg)