What Makes a Mound? Earth-Sourced Materials in Late Iron Age Burial Mounds

The interpretation of Late Iron Age burial mounds often focuses exclusively on the discovered contents, the social identity or role of the interred and the economic and political implications that can be extracted. This article considers the mound itself as a basis for archaeological interpretation, and attempts to place substantial late Iron Age burial mounds within the landscape they are made of. Within these burial mounds internal references to time, place and the transformations and imbued associations within the earth-sourced materials are purposeful and significant. This is illustrated via comparable examples from southern Norway, and to add contrast, cases from the Viking Age Isle of Man will be explored. This article will outline why the selected mounds should be seen as closely related to each other in the references they contain, and how the materials used can be seen as a purposeful link to the land itself.

Factoids of Assyrian presence in Anatolia: towards a historiography of archaeological interpretation at Kültepe-Kaneš

This article offers a historiographical examination of how 20th-century ideas of assimilation and cultural purity have shaped our understanding of Bronze Age Anatolia, focusing on the canonical narrative of Assyrian presence at the site of Kültepe-Kaneš. According to this narrative, Old Assyrian merchants who lived and conducted business at Kaneš from the early 20th to the late 18th century BC left no trace in the archaeological record except for cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals, assimilating to local culture to such a degree that Kültepe’s archaeological record is entirely of Anatolian character. The accuracy of this view has met increasing circumspection in recent years. What remains to be articulated is why it remained unchallenged for so long, from its initial formulation in 1948 until the late 2000s, during which time it was widely repeated and reiterated. It is proposed here that the persistence and longevity of what is essentially a misconstrued notion of foreign (in)visibility in Kültepe’s material record can be explained by treating it as a ‘factoid’. The article first historicises the factoid’s formulation and subsequent development. This is followed by a critical evaluation of the evidentiary bases of the factoid to show how disciplinary tendencies to privilege certain categories of evidence over others have created artificial gaps in the data. Ultimately, the article seeks to highlight the epistemological implications of how one of the key sites of Bronze Age Anatolia came to represent a perceived rather than an observed case of indigenous cultural purity.

Havana Tradition Platform Pipe Production and Disposition: Implications for Interpreting Regional Variation in Midwestern Hopewell Ceremonialism

This study documents the contexts of platform pipe creation, distribution, and disposition at Illinois Havana Hopewell Tradition (50 BC to AD 200–250) sites to identify regional variation in Hopewell ceremonialism and exchange. We observe that the large deposits of stone pipes buried during communal rituals in the Scioto Valley and the continued influence of the Hopewell Sphere of Interaction have skewed archaeological interpretation. Aside from the several large deposits, pipes are limited in the Scioto Tradition and seldom found in habitation areas. In Illinois, pipe fabrication debris commonly occurs in habitation areas along with numerous examples of pipe repair and maintenance. Local pipestones—often from northern Illinois Sterling deposits—predominate, and exotic imported pipestones are unusual. Pipes are rare inclusions with individual burials as indicators of status, spiritual prowess, achievement, or group membership. The high value placed on pipes as communal sacra in Ohio and their value in Illinois as items of personal influence parallels their common occurrence in Illinois and their unique context in Ohio Hopewell. This study of the contexts of pipe manufacture and deposition reinforces current discussions of such artifact assemblages as important in documenting local variations in political, social, and religious mortuary ceremonialism across the “Hopewellian sphere.”

Going from Analogue to Digital: A Study of Documentation Methods during an Excavation of the Neolithic Flint Mines at Pilbladet, Sweden

The ‘digital turn’ in archaeology has resulted in documentation, analysis, visualization and repository requirements becoming increasingly digital in recent years. However, we are only at the beginning of understanding how the shift from analogue to digital affects archaeological interpretation, as attention has mainly been directed towards technological aspects. However, how archaeology is executed influences the production of archaeological knowledge, and additional research into digital practices and their consequences is needed. During the latest excavation in 2014 of the Neolithic flint mines of Södra Sallerup, in Malmö in southern Sweden, several recording methods were used to document the remains in plan, including hand drawing, digital mapping with GPS and digital photography using a camera mounted on a pole. The records were used to create both a digital plan as well as georeferenced orthophotos from a 3D model and from photomosaic. The aim was to produce a record comparable to previous documentation from decades of archaeological excavations of the flint mines in the area, as well as one that is up-to-date with today’s digital standards. The methods are described and their consequences for the archaeological results are discussed.

Taking out the Trash: On Excavating Settlements in General, and Houses of the Battle Axe Culture in Particular

Archaeological interpretation rests partly on theory and partly on material remains, and changes in field methods can cause major changes in both areas. Longhouses were virtually unknown on mainland Sweden until the introduction of the excavator machine in the late 1970s. However, this method is biased in that the cultural practice of some periods is favoured at the expense of others. From the Battle Axe culture very few houses and artcfacts have been found, and it has bcen suggested the sitcs were not true settlements. This vicw is challenged by showing that taphonomic processes and cultural practice combine to make this period difficult to identify using the standard field method. Paradoxically, some other periods have no more remains and/or house structures than the Battle Axe period has, but they are not subjected to the same debate. Comparison with Corded Ware sites in Europe provides support for the argument that the scarcity of Battle Axe settlements is mainly due to taphonomic processes. Thc article calls for more reflective field methods on all prehistoric settlements.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Time perception has important consequences for how human activity is structured. The question of how time perception has shifted in history could therefore be of certain importance in archaeological interpretation. This article is an attempt to analyze the construction of time in early- and high-medieval lreland and Scandinavia. The bell and the sound of the bell related to a theological concept in Christian ideology which referred to time. The bell was to become an utensil of power in the process of christianization. With help of the bell, the church partly abolished the subjectivity in the perception of time. When the bell rang it thereby dictated a common sense of time. We could therefore perhaps assume that a conceptual polemic concerning time has been one of the reasons for conflicts in medieval Ireland and Scandinavia.

The Vedic Agni and Scandinavian Fire Rituals: A Possible Connection

To use ethnographic analogies is not the same as picking up ready-made interpretations from one cultural context and importing them into another. On the contrary, analogies are a powerful and necessary tool for any archaeological interpretation. If we as scientists are not aware of this we will most certainly use our own time and culture as an unconscious analogy: it is not possible to make interpretations, or even to think, without references outside oneself, and such references are nothing but analogies. l will put forward the hypothesis that the Late Bronze Age society of Scandinavia had rituals resembling, and probably related to, the Vedic tradition. As in Vedic tradition, fire sacrifice seems to have been an important ritual practice in Scandinavia. The Vedic fire altars are built as a symbolic microcosmos, repeating the creation of the world, and the fire (Agni) is seen as a link between earth and the heavenly fire —the sun.

The Tyranny of the Gingerbread House: Contextualising the Fear of Wolves in Medieval Northern Europe through Material Culture, Ecology and Folklore

In this paper, I propose to contextualise the popular perception ofthe "fairy tale wolf" as a window into a normative past, by focusing on responses to this animal in Britain and southern Scandinavia from the 8th to the 14th centuries, drawing on archaeological, artistic and written sources. These responses are subsequently juxtaposed with the socio-ecological context of the concept of the "fairy tale wolf" in early modern France. At a time when folklore is being increasingly incorporated into archaeological interpretation, I suggest that alternative understandings ofhuman relations with animals must be rooted in specific ecological and social contexts.