The First Century of the Town of Tornio

The town of Tornio, on the border of present-day Finland and Sweden, was founded in 1621, on the order of the King of Sweden, to replace the old medieval marketplace on the estuary of the Tornio river. It was the northernmost urban site in Europe at the time. The founding and early development of the town was part of the broader trade-political process in the emerging Kingdom of Sweden during the early modern age. The original town was a small, wooden trading-post-like place, settled mostly by peasants from the surrounding countryside. This chapter provides an overview of Tornio’s urban development in its first century of existence, and discusses the development of the built environment based on the results of archaeological studies conducted since the 1960s. Lastly, the chapter addresses the early urbanization process of the inhabitants by considering their relationships with artefacts during the early phases of the town.

Archaeological Research in St Petersburg, Russia

St Petersburg, founded in 1703 and now the second largest city in Russia, has always been considered as a ‘new city’. However, it was not founded on a barren site. The land in the mouth of the Neva has been inhabited since the Neolithic era. In the middle ages, it was home to Ingrian and Russian settlements. Constant military conflicts over this territory both in the Middle Ages and in post-medieval times have left their traces—the remnants of the demolished Swedish fortresses, Landskrona (fourteenth century) and Nyenschantz (seventeenth century). During the 300-year history of St Petersburg, many fortifications, engineering structures, and architectural sites have been lost, and their history and remnants are becoming a target for thorough architectural research.

Modernization on the Northern Fringe of Europe

The Atlantic world looms large in discussions of how the modern world emerged, and what modernization was about; but there have been calls to engage with these topics from the perspective of ‘margins’. Covering large areas of Fennoscandia, the seventeenth-century Kingdom of Sweden represented a northern end of urban Europe, but also encompassed the mythical Lapland, homeland of the Sámi and of natural and supernatural wonders—a contested borderland between the European ‘western’ and Russian ‘eastern’ worlds. This northern fringe of early modern Europe saw dynamic arenas of interaction where new cultural forms were generated. These localized transformations and the transmutations of modernity are the subjects of this chapter. Studying early modern processes of modernization from the perspective of the northern peripheries can provide new insights and challenges, not only into the understanding of the early modern history of the Swedish kingdom, but into the general perception of these processes.

The Slave Trade and Coastal West Africa

The Atlantic slave trade has been the focus of archaeological work in a number of West African countries. Much of the work has emphasized the impressive trade castles of the Ghana coast, where extensive European constructions demonstrate the importance of the slave trade in the regions’ history. Work has also been conducted on other settings, including in Bénin, where African agency manifested itself differently than on the Gold Coast of modern Ghana; Sierra Leone and Gambia, where European trading establishments were typically smaller; and Guinea, where the ‘illegal’ slave trade of the nineteenth century blossomed. Many of these sites of enslavement have become important parts of local heritage, as well as a global heritage of African-descended people and the heritage tourism associated with the African Diaspora.

Many Worlds Colliding

The character of historical archaeology in South Africa has been cast by the geography of its development and the historical roots of its subject matter. Arising in the south-western Cape, where Europeans collided with the nomadic Khoe and Bushmen, research agendas meshed with broader sub-disciplinary goals for a global, comparative archaeology of the last 500 years. In practice, this led to a focus on sites associated with European colonists. Investigations issuing from the ‘other side’ of these encounters were rare. In this chapter we acknowledge the important precedents set by pioneer researchers and explore how historical archaeologies in the interior offer new directions. Here encroaching colonists met established farming groups, encounters that set in motion complex and historically situated long-term entanglements. Recent and developing research in these areas signals a growing maturity within the field, enhanced by increasing collaboration among archaeologists of different sub-disciplinary persuasions, and between archaeologists and historians.

The Archaeologist’s Evangeline

The French colony of Acadia, located in what is now the Maritime Provinces of Canada and part of the State of Maine, has long attracted the attention of writers and scholars. Immigrating to the region in the early seventeenth century, the Acadian colonists established a viable agricultural economy without alienating the region’s indigenous peoples. Despite these achievements, imperial politics brought war to the region in the mid-eighteenth century, and saw most of the French inhabitants removed by force. Historical archaeology is helping to recover details of this early Canadian immigrant experience, but the task is complicated by a scholarly tradition dominated by romanticism and myth. This chapter surveys the development of historical archaeology in reference to the Acadians in Nova Scotia, noting how archaeology has helped reframe understandings of this colonial experience, and suggesting ways to carry the project further.

Antarctic Archaeology

Antarctica was the last continent to be known. Human encounters with the region acquired different characteristics over time. Within the framework of dominant narratives, the early ‘exploitation’ of the territory was given less attention than late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ‘exploration’. Nineteenth-century exploitation was especially associated with sealing on the South Shetland Islands. Dominant narratives on the period refer to the captains of sealing vessels, the discovery of geographical features, the volume of resources obtained. However, they do not consider the life of the ordinary sealers who lived and worked on the islands. This chapter aims to show the power of archaeology to shed light on these ‘invisible people’ and their forgotten stories. It holds that archaeology offers a possibility for reimagining the past of Antarctica, calling for a revision of traditional narratives.

On the Fence, Over the Fence

Given the significance of military training in shaping early archaeological practice, and the enthusiasm with which archaeologists have explored the remains of early conflict (from the Roman and medieval periods especially), it is surprising how long it has taken archaeologists to develop interest in more recent conflict. It seems to have taken the fiftieth anniversaries of the Second World War to inspire interest amongst professional archaeologists and across the heritage sector, following a longer history of amateur endeavour. This chapter briefly reviews these earlier histories of the subject, before focusing on some recent examples that illustrate the breadth of research and the opportunities it provides for public engagement. The role of anniversaries appears particularly relevant at the time of writing, with the centenary of the First World War. Alongside archaeological activities along the former Western Front, and in Jordan, an archaeological survey of the UK Home Front is under way.

Manchester

This chapter provides an overview of one of the most significant nineteenth-century industrial cities: Manchester. It reviews the seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century background to the emergence of the nineteenth-century industrial city: weak local lordship and the concentration of commercial power in a small group of entrepreneurial textile families. What emerged was a template for the industrial city: an urban-based textile manufacturing centre with dedicated workers’ housing serviced by a detailed and efficient transport network. This model would be copied by cities in Europe and North America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The outline of the nineteenth-century industrial city is described through its archaeology, in the form of standing structures and excavated evidence. This includes the canal and railway infrastructure, the excavation of workers’ housing and the recording of surviving workshop dwellings, and the survey and excavation of Manchester’s most important manufacturing type-site: the steam-powered cotton spinning mill.

Far Behind the Front

The ascent of Sweden as a major military power in Northern Europe in the seventeenth century is forever connected to the Thirty Years War. The story of King Gustavus Adolphus, and battles like Breitenfeld, Lech, Lützen, and Nördlingen mark the real beginning of the Swedish Age of Greatness. In recent decades battlefield archaeology has proved important in describing these events, widening our understanding of the military actions and their effects on local populations. This chapter focuses on Jönköping, a Swedish town where the early modern period has been examined archaeologically over three decades. This town can be used as a metaphor for Sweden during the seventeenth century as the inherent weakness of the new empire becomes evident. Events here exemplify both the visions held by the absolutist state and their consequences for ordinary people. The chapter also provides a background to the mobilization of local resources and logistics that made the Swedish war effort of 1627–48 possible.