Olsen et al. (Eds.): Hybrid Spaces
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The late medieval period brought dramatic social and demographic changes to the northern coastal region of Arctic Norway and northwest Russia. From the 13th century on, the native Sámi found themselves increasingly surrounded by foreign peoples that had come here to trade and collect tribute, to harvest the sea, to make political ambitions manifest, and even to combat each other.
The flow of people, things, and practices created a direct and compressed articulation of cultural differences formerly set apart, and thus a far more diverse cultural environment in the high north. The number of new archaeological signatures added to the costal landscape is a conspicuous manifestation of this medieval diversity.
Paramount in this respect are the so-called multi-room houses, a complex and enigmatic settlement structure confined to these northern shores. Although for centuries attracting the curiosity of scholars and laymen, the recently completed research project presented in this book is the first attempt at a more thorough and inter-disciplinary approach to understanding these sites. Challenging the mono-cultural interpretations that hitherto have dominated their interpretations, our main conclusion is that the multi-room houses were used by rivaling groups and for different purposes. Despite being introduced as dwellings for distant peoples, they soon came to host both natives and newcomers. Their very design moreover was the result of a mixture of faraway traditions, borrowings, and local adaptations, thus making the multi-room houses truly hybrid spaces.
CONTENTS
Preface and Acknowledgement 5
List of illustrations 9
Notes on contributors 19
Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1: Introduction – Bjørnar Olsen 25
Chapter 2: A Brief Outline of the Historical Setting – Bjørnar Olsen 29
Chapter 3: Scholars and Multi-Room Houses: A Historiography – Jørn E. Henriksen 33
Chapter 4: Coastal Finnmark and the Environment of
the Multi-Room Houses – Colin P. Amundsen 39
Part II: Fieldwork
Chapter 5: The Multi-Room House Sites: Surveys and Test Excavations –
Bjørnar Olsen, Jørn E. Henriksen and Elin Rose Myrvoll 49
Chapter 6: Excavation of Iron Age Sites – Elin Rose Myrvoll 83
Chapter 7: The Skonsvika Site – Katarzyna Skrzynska-Jankowska and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 93
Chapter 8: Boathouse Excavation at Skonsvika – Gørill Nilsen and Stephen Wickler 121
Chapter 9: The Kongshavn Site – Jørn E. Henriksen and Bjørnar Olsen 131
Chapter 10: Minor Excavations: The Løkvik and Nordmannset Sites –
Elin Rose Myrvoll, Przemyslaw Urbanczyk and Colin Amundsen 149
Chapter 11: Geophysical Surveys in Skonsvika, Løkvik and Nordmannset – Krzysztof Misiewicz 159
Chapter 12: Skonsvika and Experiments with Digitalised Recording System –
Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 169
Part III: Artifacts, Architecture and Chronology
Chapter 13: Artifacts: The Finds Retrieved – Jørn E. Henriksen, Camilla Nordby and Cora Oschman 181
Chapter 14: Multi-Room Houses: Site Organization and Architecture –
Bjørnar Olsen and Jørn E. Henriksen 207
Chapter 15: Comparative Approach to Architecture and
Formation Processes at Skonsvika – Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 221
Chapter 16: The Chronology of Multi-Room Houses - Jørn E. Henriksen 229
Part IV: Beyond Artifacts: Bones, Grains and Sediments
Chapter 17: The Zoo-Archaeology of Multi-Room Houses. – Colin Amundsen 241
Chapter 18: Vegetation History and Anthropogenic Impact on Vegetation at
Localities with Multi-Room Houses in Finnmark, Norway – Christin Jensen 265
Chapter 19: Activities and Accumulations: Micromorphology Analyses of
Archaeological Sediments from Multi-Room Houses in Finnmark, Norway –
Ian A. Simpson and W. Paul Adderley 285
Chapter 20: The Archaeo-Botany of Multi-Room House Sites – Roger Engelmark 307
Part V: The Medieval Context: Ethnicity, Settlement and Borders
Chapter 21: Finnmark, Bjarkøy and the Norwegian Kingdom –
Reidun Laura Andreassen and Håvard Dahl Bratrein 315
Chapter 22: Finnmark between the East and the West –
Reidun Laura Andreassen and Håvard Dahl Bratrein 329
Chapter 23: The Russian-Norwegian Border in Medieval and Early Modern Times. -
Lars Ivar Hansen 355
Part VI: Conclusion
Chapter 24: Interpreting Multi-Room Houses: Origin, Function and
Cultural Networks – Bjørnar Olsen, Jørn E. Henriksen And Przemyslaw Urbanzcyk 371
References 389
ISBN 978-82-7099-602-5, 413 pp., hardcover
Format: 21x29,7 cm, weight: 2 kgs, year of publication: 2011, language: English