Theme:
6. Contested Pasts & Presents
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
Migration and Mobility in the Viking Age from the Baltic to the Black Seas: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Content:
Eastern Central Europe was a vital zone of interaction during the northern European Viking Age (9th to 11th centuries AD), linking Scandinavia to Byzantium and the Islamic empires. The Scandinavian presence and interactions with the local cultures at this time is a long-discussed and still poorly understood phenomenon. Scandinavian artefacts appear along the Baltic coastlines in numerous burial grounds. The impact extended as far as the Black Sea region.
Increased mobility of people, animals and goods is a defining feature of the Viking Age with evidence drawn from archaeological, anthropological and historical sources. Recent research and discoveries in the Eastern Baltic region and Ukraine provide a more comprehensive picture of population movements that extends far beyond Scandinavian incursions or trade settlements across Europe. Projects like Ostriv (Germany-Ukraine), Ribe (Denmark) and Salme (Estonia) have utilised modern laboratory techniques, including AMS C14 dating to refine regional chronologies, isotopic studies and physical anthropology to reconstruct mobility and diet, and aDNA to detail impacts on the modern European genome. New finds from Poland, the Baltic States, Bulgaria and the Ukraine have made it possible to take a broader look at the “Varangians” phenomenon from an eastern perspective.
This session present the state of the art of Viking Age mobility research from the perspective of the southern and eastern Baltic Sea region with a reference to the latest research from Scandinavia to the Black Sea. We welcome papers exploring this topic and bringing together the latest results and projects in this thematic field in a broad methodological framework. Our aim is to present a diverse range of data from traditional archaeological, archival studies as well as innovative scientific, anthropological and biomolecular approaches.
Keywords:
Viking Age cemeteries, strontium, 14C dating, aDNA, physical anthropology, GIS
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:
Roman Shiroukhov (Germany) 1
Co-organisers:
Katherine McCullough French (United Kingdom) 2
Christoph Jahn (Germany) 1
Justina Kozakaitė (Lithuania) 3
Vyacheslav Baranov (Ukraine) 4
Affiliations:
1. Centre for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA)
2. School of History, Archaeology and Religion Cardiff University
3. Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University
4. Institute of Archaeology of the National Academy of Science of Ukraine
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