Session: #301

Content:

This session addresses the temporal and social aspects of the regional and inter-regional procurement, distribution and consumption of raw materials during the Iron age, Roman period and the Middle Ages. Looking at studies analyzing the flow of e.g. metals, wood, fur, food, textiles, stone, ceramics and glass or living stock and humans this session has three main questions: (1) How can we describe the flow of different raw materials and resources in different parts of Europe? (2) How can we relate the recorded geographical distribution of raw materials to social strata? And (3) to what extent is the distribution of raw materials related to known prehistoric/medieval game-changing events, such as the introduction of the sail, political changes and dynamics in social networks.
Until recently, answering such questions has been extremely challenging, as traditional archaeological methods of provenancing (primarily through stylistic typology) have its limitations and written sources relating to resource exchange during the pre-defined periods are generally scarce. However, in recent years the collaboration between the natural sciences and archaeology has greatly advanced, setting out new possibilities for the studies of resource flow in the past.
The session welcomes papers, which contextualize provenancing data/results. This includes studies with a microscale starting point in a specific archaeological case or region, as well as studies addressing the geography and sociology of natural resources from more overall and macroscale perspectives. Ideally this session will embrace contexts of the rural as well as the urban world, the local as well as the non-local, the unique as well as the ordinary and the perishable as well as the durable.

Session: #301

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