EAA 2023: Abstract

In Norway, the Norwegian state – effectively the five archaeological University Museums – has the responsibility for performing rescue excavations of prehistoric sites and monuments that are destroyed by modern development. According to the law of antiquities, these excavations are financed by the developers, which sometimes are private firms and corporations, but for the most part companies that are owned by the state itself. Since the mid-1950s, there has been massive development along the Norwegian coast and mountain plateaux, which were preceded by rescue excavations. Such excavations has been particularly common since 1980, and during 1980-2015 the University Museum of Bergen carried out 165 Stone Age excavations in western Norway. Parallel to this, the number of research excavations in this region has been low. An overview of the rescue excavated sites was published in 2020 and since then, the museum has continued the work on establishing databases covering surveyed sites and stray-finds in addition to excavated sites. These different databases show that there are significant discrepancies between the distribution of the different data types, which indicates that rescue excavations only cover a part of the site- types and landscapes that were used during the Stone Age. It is argued that a new strategy is needed to catch up on this problem, which requires active collaboration within the University sector as well as towards archaeologists in the County Council. Without a doubt, there is a need for targeted survey campaigns in new landscapes which are followed up by research excavations.

Stone Age, Rescue excavations, Research excavations, Site distributions, Landscape, Collaborations

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Knut Andreas Bergsvik¹

Victor Lundström¹
Jostein Aksdal²