Theme:
1. Artefacts, Buildings & Ecofacts
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Defining Site Functions in the Viking World: Weaving Narratives from Disparate Strands of Evidence
Content:
The roles of many Viking-Age sites are often difficult to determine, even when they contain clear archaeological signatures like structures, working areas, or burials. Viking-Age archaeologists weave their interpretations using a variety of different sources and evidence - archaeology, history, placenames, artistic styles, linguistics. Archaeologists are inhibited by limited excavation trenches or artefact survival, while historians face the limits of the archives. Despite these constraints, we tout certainty in our identification of a site as a Viking-Age one based on combining multiple strands of evidence.
Much of this confidence comes from earlier tendencies to classify and categorise sites as one thing or another, a winter camp, burial site, Type 1 house or Petersen Type sword. Yet, Gero (2007) and Joyce (2006) emphasises the potential of ambiguity and the creative way we construct narratives in archaeology. Ambiguity can be a positive interpretive force, but it is one that is rarely seen in Viking-Age interpretations.
In this session, we invite papers which explore the methods and processes of interpreting datasets whilst considering questions of ambiguity and reinterpretation. We take the parameters set by Sindbaek and Lund (2021) to define the Viking Age. This is not an ethnic definition but materially defined ways of living AD 750/800 - 1050 within Scandinavia and northern Germany, the diaspora of eastern and western Europe, and the North Atlantic islands and Newfoundland. We welcome fluid and alternative narratives, and more critical dissection of the combination of analytical and creative skills that we apply within Viking-Age archaeology.
Keywords:
Viking period, Interpretations, Evidence and sources, Archaeology, Challenging assumptions.
Session associated with MERC:
yes
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Ian Russell (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Harold Mytum (United Kingdom) 2
Rebecca Boyd (Ireland) 3
Affiliations:
1. Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool
2. Archaeology, Classics & Egyptology, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool
3. Irish Archaeological Consultancy
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