Håkon Glørstad

The first eastern migrations of people and knowledge into Scandinavia : evidence from studies of Mesolithic technology, 9th-8th millennium BC

In this paper a team of Scandinavian researchers identifies and describes a Mesolithic technological concept, referred to as ‘the conical core pressure blade’ concept, and investigates how this concept spread into Fennoscandia and across Scandinavia. Using lithic technological, contextual archaeological and radiocarbon analyses, it is demonstrated that this blade concept arrived with ‘post-Swiderian’ hunter-gatherer groups from the Russian plain into northern Fennoscandia and the eastern Baltic during the 9th millennium bc. From there it was spread by migrating people and/or as transmitted knowledge through culture contacts into interior central Sweden, Norway and down along the Norwegian coast. However it was also spread into southern Scandinavia, where it was formerly identified as the Maglemosian technogroup 3 (or the ‘Sværdborg phase’). In this paper it is argued that the identification and spread of the conical core pressure blade concept represents the first migration of people, technology and ideas into Scandinavia from the south-eastern Baltic region and the Russian plain.

Where are the Missing Boats? The Pioneer Settlement of Norway as Long-Term History

During the last ten years there has been a growing interest in understanding the earliest settlement of northern Europe. In Norway, specialized marine adaptation and high mobility based on traffic with seafaring skin boats are key elements in a new synthesis of the colonization process. This article addresses the process of colonization from a perspective of long-term history, analysing the record in an archaeological retrospective perspective. Such an analysis is intended to challenge and discuss some of the presumptions giving an implicit framework to the current state of knowledge. The main argument is that the long-term structures of Mesolithic settlement and subsistence in Norway are key for understanding the colonization of this landscape. Key elements in such a discussion are the nature of the early Mesolithic transport and communication systems. It is reasonable to question the range of mobility and the seagoing quality of the vessels. The sites preserved show traces of boat production that resembles the rest of the Mesolithic. This touches upon a more fundamental question concerning the status of the archaeological record as source material for understanding human societies and history.

Deglaciation, sea-level change and the Holocene colonization of Norway

Abstract The Norwegian coast facing the Atlantic Ocean was ice free as early as the Allerød oscillation in the late Pleistocene. The landscape was probably habitable for humans. It has, therefore, been assumed by several scholars that this coastline was visited or inhabited from the Late Glacial period onwards. In part, this argumentation is based on the presumed proximity of the Norwegian mainland and Doggerland, which existed between present-day Denmark and Great Britain because of a much lower global sea level. The aim of this paper is to examine the 14C dates available from the oldest Norwegian settlement sites, and to compare them to the Quaternary processes of deglaciation and sea-level change. The hypothesis is advanced that humans did not settle in present-day Norway before a sheltering passage of islands and peninsulas had developed between the Swedish west coast (Bohuslän) and the Oslo area. This happened in the second half of the Preboreal period, at approximately 9.3 cal ka BC, or in the final centuries of the tenth millenniun BC. Supplementary material: 14C dates used in Figures 2, 4 and 9 are available at http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18779.

The Allure of Bureaucracy: Cultural Heritage Management and the Universities in Norway

In Norway, cultural heritage management is still an integrated part of the universities. Five university museums are responsible for all development-led excavations. Thus, cultural heritage management is strongly inspired by the “humboldtian” idea that research, education, and management should constitute an integrated system of knowledge production. Such a system got its advantages but also its challenges concerning balancing the different tasks, secure sufficient academic growth, and internationalization. Today, the public agenda seem to disfavor cultural historical museums in general and university museums in particular. Their engagement in heritage management seem to be an outdated system. In this article we argue that even though the Norwegian system seems exotic, even archaic, it still got some important advantages. The holistic philosophy behind could be promoted as a viable solution for heritage management in general and a revitalizing of archaeological collections as source material for research and education.

Nature in society: reflections over a Mesolithic sculpture of a fossilised shell

The paper presents a sculpture made of a fossilised shell. It was found during an excavation at the site Torpum 9b in Østfold, south‐eastern Norway. The site and thereby the figure are dated to the late Mesolithic period. The sculpture is interpreted as an essence of female attributes, that is the hips and pelvis of a female human with the genitalia marked. This interpretation requires a discussion of the relations between general principles and actual historical situations. The interest in fossils is presumable universal, but the specific culture‐historical interpretation of the sculpture from Østfold must take the local Mesolithic context as its framework. Through an examination of fossils in folklore and prehistory, and a presentation of the particular fossils geological origin and context, the universal and non‐historical meaning of the sculpture is presented. This perspective is then discussed in the context of the east Norwegian Mesolithic.

The Northern Coasts of Doggerland and the Colonisation of Norway at the End of the Ice Age

Due to the need for a national strategy for offshore wind farms in Norway, a small and preliminary joint archaeological and geological research project was conducted. The aim of the investigation was to determine the possibilities for human occupation in the southernmost parts of the Norwegian sector of the North Sea during the Late Glacial and Preboreal periods. The research was in the shallowest area of the Norwegian sector of the continental shelf, south of the Norwegian Trench. By analysing 3D seismic reflection data, several layers with traces of drainage systems and other landforms could be identified in the sediments. These features were, however, mainly situated deep down below the surface of the seabed, and covered by more than 100 m of younger sediments. Their age is therefore uncertain, even if the depth alone indicates that they are much older than the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). A sediment core through the shallow sea-bed sediments (0–13 m below present sea floor) was analysed for environmental and chronological data. The youngest observed transition, from glacio-lacustrine to marine sediments, was dated to approximately 14,000 cal. BC or the Older Dryas. This indicates that this part of Doggerland was not dry land after the LGM, but was first covered by an ice-dammed lake and later inundated by saltwater from the Atlantic Ocean. The analysis also indicates that the distance from Doggerland to Norway, in the periods when people began to inhabit southern Scandinavia, was far too long to be crossed by boats or on ice. This makes the western coast of Sweden and Bohuslan the most likely bridgehead in the colonisation of Norway. Humans arrived at the Norwegian shores first when a safe and sheltered passage was created between Bohuslan and the Oslo Fjord area, at approximately 9300 cal. BC.

Rune Iversen: The Transformation of Neolithic Societie.s. An Eastern Danish Perspective on the 3rd Millennium BC

Stebergløkken’s work may rightly be described as a theoretical performance. Her research is presented in accordance with the old Hemingway imperative of showing rather than telling, a fruitful approach that nevertheless demands a lot from the reader in terms of close attention and imaginative participation. Summing up, reading Stebergløkken’s work is to be inspired by empirically succinct and stringently articulated hypotheses regarding the forces that animate figural variations with fluid meaning. By way of effective deconstruction of the axiomatic ideas engendering the habitual substitution of typological classes with culture, time or universal aesthetic preferences, Stebergløkken’s work is of relevance not only for scholars interested in the character of midNorwegian rock art, but also for archaeologists dealing with larger topics such as perception or the intersections between archaeology and aesthetics. All in all, this work provides both an excellent introduction to the main issues driving what typically goes by the name of style analysis and typology and a taste of a broader conception of what such research could be. Extensive in its empirical coverage, dense in its arguments, this book invites a refreshed intellectual dialogue regarding the fundaments of visual communication, which is also why I warmly recommend it.

Reply to Comments from Sveinung Bang-Andersen, Hein B. Bjerck, Clive Bonsall, Catriona Pickard, Peter Groom, Vicki Cummings, Berit Valentin Eriksen, Ingrid Fuglestvedt, Peter Rowley-Conwy, Roger Wikell and Mattias Pettersson

of burned seal fat, in Norway called spekkebetong (blubber concrete). Chemical analysis confirmed that there were remains of marine lipids in the material (Isaksson 2012, Pettersson and Wikell 2012). We also found c. 1 kg of burnt seal bones (Halichoerus grypus and Phoca hispida). C dating has been carried out on the burnt seal fat, giving the date c. 7800–7500 cal. BC (after correction for reservoir effect). In this early phase we believe that people in this region moved between the archipelago and the inland, and yes they probably hunted a lot of elk. Very possibly they had skis and sledges too. But, later on in the Mesolithic, the archipelago was much larger, and we see a much denser settlement pattern there with a variety of sites of different size and location. Greenstone axes are a common trait for these – we would like to say – permanent settlements. The marine eco-system is stable and diverse. By this time you do not need to move to the inland for elk hunting. That is something the inland neighbours do. As a seafaring coastal people you have your identity and pride with the elaborate boats – log boats with raised gunwale and lots of carved decorations. With these you met your friends and relatives along the coast of Scandinavia, on rare occasions perhaps even the distant Nøstvet people; with these boats you faced the enemy.We think that prestigious longdistancewar canoeswere at hand long before the late Neolithic and the rise of Scandinavian Bronze Age. The reader recalls Glørstad’s opening question: ‘Where are themissing boats?’And we agree – the boats are truly missed.