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During the early 17th century, Finns migrated within the Swedish kingdom from interior Finland to virgin spruce forest areas in Sweden. There they settled in finnmarker, areas with Finnish-speaking households conducting large-scale swidden cultivation, huuhta in Finnish. Eventually they were called Forest Finns. Their farms were centered around a rökstuga, a living-house with a stone-oven without a chimney.Four Forest Finn farms have been excavated. The article discusses how the Finnish households were integrated in the local and regional market economy, thus acquiring the same kind of things also used by their Swedish neighbours, including status and prestige objects, e.g. display ceramics and window glass panes. At the same time, they continued to live in their traditional rökstugor, which owing to different space, light and warmth compared to a Swedish cottage with an open fireplace, conditioned other relations between the individuals of the households. The process of change, Swedification, of the Forest Finns was not unilinear.Ethnicity is the social process of meeting between two or more groups of people forming ‘us-and-them’-relations. The early-modern Forest Finns is an example of complex change as concerns materiality involved in ethnicity, in this case triggered by the meeting of ‘the others’ as a result of migration.

In this article, a dataset of burial grounds is considered in relation to the question of a probable demographic crisis in the 6th century AD, as a consequence of the cosmic event in AD 536-7. Although indications of an extensive crisis can be seen in a wide range of sources, it is difficult to make any estimate of the extent of the crisis. Some hypothetical social consequences are, however, discussed and compared to the Black Death in the 14th century AD. For the 6th century crisis, a widespread upheaval and renegotiation of property rights for land that has been abandoned is suggested, together with a possible redefinition of the nature of property rights. After the crisis there seem to be increased possibilities for private ownership of land, which enables the acquisition of large landholdings among a limited number of people. This is related to an increasingly stratified social structure in the Late Iron Age, where an elite is thought to have been able to take advantage of the crisis for their own benefit. It is argued that this is reflected in the Late Iron Age/Vendel Period burial grounds and their locations, as these might have been used to manifestrenewed property rights.

In order to obtain lucidity, it is essential to choose adequate terminology when speaking of prehistoric houses. The understanding of house construction requires a terminology with a focus on construction. Very often, archaeologists instead use a terminology with a focus on the remains, and use an inadequate terminology for constructions, indicating that they do not fully consider howthe constructions work. The article presents some suggestions for adequate construction terminology.

International audience; This article presents a Merovingian Period silver spoon that was recently discovered in an opulent female chamber grave in the “Niederfeld” row grave cemetery of Ichtratzheim (Bas-Rhin). The spoon has no less than three different inscriptions, one in seriffed Latin capitals and two in runes. The first contains a Latin male personal name, Matteus, the second a previously unattested runic lapela ‘spoon’, and the third a sequence abuda, presumably a female personal name. This makes it the second known example of an inscribed object with both runes and Latin from Merovingian Period Gaul. From a runological perspective, this is one of the most important discoveries in recent times because it contains the oldest known case of a linguistically meaningful runic inscription using the rare p-rune and some very archaic linguistic forms. From an archaeological perspective, this is one of the richest known Merovingian Period female burials in Alsace, and it is very likely that the buried woman may have been a leading member of the local elite.

Repeatedly, archaeological research on landing sites draws upon the equivalence between a naturally suitable coast and a landing site/harbour. This kind of research emanates from an archaeologically and socially ill-defined landing site concept and has created a basis for arbitrary discussions on the nature of maritime activities of past societies. There is no comprehensive and integrated understanding of the existing variability, character and patterns of landing site behaviour and relations. This article addresses the question of what characterises landing sites for watercrafts in an archaeological and social perspective. If such characteristics can bedefined, what are the possibilities of seeing any of these traits in an archaeological material? Defining a landing site as a contact zone where movements and meetings on land and by watercraft take place and are facilitated by the locality as such, a generally applicable model for the archaeological study of landing sites is suggested and checked against three different archaeological case studies from the Baltic Sea region.

The paper uses new palaeo-ecological data and a selective review of archaeological and written sources to show how social and natural history over the last 1200 years have interacted to form the present day landscape of Limpopo National Park and Northern Kruger National Park. The long-term mosaic of different communities in this landscape, hunter and gatherers, pastoralists, farmers and traders has, over time, contributed to shape and reshape a heterogeneous landscape. While some features in this landscape, such as water scarcity, have remained stable over time, there have also been major transformations in both the physical landscape and social life. The natural mosaics have been utilised and enhanced over time and the combination of natural and cultural mosaics are reflected in the landscape through archaeological sites, the pollen record and in the present day landscape.

This article focuses on Swedish and Scandinavian contract archaeology and 14C dating. It is a follow-up of a case study by Diinhoff and Slinning (2013), who discuss the 14C dating of a house from the Early Iron Age at Gjøsund, Ålesund, Norway. Their discussion is methodical and well-focussed, but intuitive when it comes to analysing 14C dates as probability distributions. Taking the case study forward, the same house is dated again using the same 14C dates. In the present contribution, the discussion is meant to suggest a more standardized approach to the chronological analysis of 14C dates of periods, such as the lifetime of a house. Having presented a methodical procedure, Diinhoff and Slinning’s case is updated following the suggested procedure. Finally, their 14C dates are introduced to Bayesian statistics using the BCal calibration tool, Beck et al. (1999).

In this paper, I survey archaeological evidence for deliberate deposits mostly containing ceramic vessels but also stones and animal bones. They were discovered at a Late Bronze Age settlement, dated to the 9th-8th centuries, situated in the northern part of the contemporary city of Wrocław in southwestern Poland. Their stratigraphical contexts indicate that their deposition took place at the very end of the use of the site, i.e. after the accumulation of the thick occupational layers. Based on the fine preservation of the vessels and their distribution, I argue that they are remains of practices performed in a common settlement area, resulting in the deposition of used ceramics. I also refer to a broad concept of the notion of ‘pottery deposits’ and compare the presented evidence with similar finds from other sites with a similar chronology.