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The Root of All Gender, Identity and Difference in the 4Th-6Th Century of Voss and Hardanger Elisabeth Aslesen

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The Root of All Gender, Identity and Difference in the 4Th-6Th Century of Voss and Hardanger Elisabeth Aslesen The Root of All Gender, Identity and Difference in the 4th-6th century of Voss and Hardanger Elisabeth Aslesen Master’s Dissertation in Archaeology Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History (IAKH) University of Oslo Spring 2020 24.06.2020 Page 1 of 105 Page 2 of 105 Acknowledgements First of all, thank you to my supervisor Vibeke M. Viestad, and thank you to my secondary supervisor Andrew Gardner. Thank you to University College London, for giving me access to their resources, without which this would not have been possible. Thank you to Siv Kristoffersen, for giving me tips on literature early on, making me understand how to start this journey. Thank you to Per Ditlef Fredriksen, for giving me guidance on the path I was taking and helping me continue it. Thank you to Jan G. Auestad, for the generous loan of his hovedoppgave. Thank you to my sister Charlotte, for proofreading my work and giving me valuable insight into how to sound like a human being in my writing. Lastly, thank you to Erling Sandmo. Anyone familiar with his work will see his influence on this text. As one of my first lecturers, I can’t overstate how fundamental he has been to my academic perspective. Thank you. Disclaimer Due to COVID-19, I had limited access to literature for a portion of this process. Resultantly, there are some deficiencies in the literature. I point out where I reference work within other work, and hope I have not misrepresented any perspectives. I also did not gain access to certain works used in this dissertation until a late stage (e.g. Hedeager 1992; Hjørungdal 1991; Næsman 1998). This has particularly affected my perspective on the political change interpreted within the Migration period. Although it should perhaps have a more significant position in the work, especially in the research history, I have attempted to integrate perspectives pertaining to this to the best of my ability. Page 3 of 105 Abstract In archaeological study of burial, the gendering of a grave forms the basis for any meaningful analysis – where gender is typically understood through the biunivocal categorisation of male and female identities. The perspective of this dissertation is that this form of identification is a function of modern Western ontology, which not only engages understanding of gender within limited terms, but also imprints gender with specific meaning. To break out of these limitations, gender is interpreted through a framework which places primacy on difference – which enables engagement with the material as coded with socially specific meaning within a given ontological perspective. In leaving aside a bifurcation of the material based on certain artefactual types as set identity signifiers – that, for instance, textile- making tools inherently signify women and weaponry inherently signify male – not only is our understanding of mortuary contexts opened up to new understanding of the differential ways that elements engage with one another – but these new engagements may indicate diversified gender constellations. In this study of mortuary material from Voss and Hardanger in Westland county (formerly Hordaland county), I argue that in the Late Roman and Migration period, three differentiations in the material are salient. It is interpreted that this reflects the social coding of at least three genders – one associated with weaponry, one with textile tools, and one with shamanistic practice – and particularly bear claws. Building on the work of Wiker (2001) and Fredriksen (2006a), who argue that a new focus on embodiment and gender differentiation emerges in the 6th century, I further argue that rather than a structure of binarised identities, the mortuary contexts of early Iron Age Western Norway can be thought of as increasingly forming processes of continually reproduced differentiation within a subset of the material. In this process, the mortuary body is increasingly made into a subject, signified with specific identity within a biunivocal structure. In this same process, polyvocality – the flow of non-signified matter – is increasingly sanctioned (Linstead and Pullen 2006). Page 4 of 105 Contents Chapter 1 – Introduction ............................................................................................................ 7 1.1 Research questions and how they will be answered ........................................................ 7 1.2 Background ...................................................................................................................... 9 1.3 Structure of dissertation ................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 2 – Theory and method ............................................................................................... 12 2.1 Gender as Multiplicities ................................................................................................. 13 2.1.1 The past and the present .......................................................................................... 16 2.1.2 Profound and constructed gender ............................................................................ 19 2.2 Background and selection of the material ...................................................................... 24 2.2.1 Chronology .............................................................................................................. 26 2.3 Statistical analysis .......................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 3 – Gender and the early Iron Age.............................................................................. 31 3.1 Identity and structure in The Early Iron Age ................................................................. 31 3.2 The Process of Identification .......................................................................................... 33 3.3 Gender identification ...................................................................................................... 35 3.3.1 The warrior and the house-wife............................................................................... 36 3.4 Iron Age Personhood and the Mortuary Subject ............................................................ 38 3.5 Gender in Archaeological Research ............................................................................... 40 Chapter 4 – Mortuary Material of Voss and Hardanger ........................................................... 45 4.1 Overview ........................................................................................................................ 45 4.5 External and internal architecture .................................................................................. 46 4.6 Bodily treatment, gendering and skeletal material ......................................................... 47 4.7 Artefacts in Voss and Hardanger ................................................................................... 49 Chapter 5 – Grouping in the material ....................................................................................... 58 5.1 Clusters ........................................................................................................................... 58 Chapter 6 – Discussion ............................................................................................................. 67 Page 5 of 105 6.1 The tree - categorisation ................................................................................................. 67 6.2 The rhizome – meaning from difference ........................................................................ 70 6.3 Polyvocality .................................................................................................................... 73 6.4 Change in the 6th century ................................................................................................ 77 6.5 Biunivocality .................................................................................................................. 78 6.6 B6227 – striating the smooth ......................................................................................... 82 Chapter 7 – Conclusions .......................................................................................................... 87 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 90 APPENDIX I .......................................................................................................................... 100 APPENDIX II ........................................................................................................................ 104 List of figures Figure 1 – Voss and Hardanger with surrounding areas (https://www.bt.no/nyheter/lokalt/i/Pdgd0/oensker-fire-kommuner-i-hordaland).................. 12 Figure 2 – The number of burials from Hardanger and Voss by period…...…………......…. 55 Figure 3 – Percentages of inhumation and cremation burials within each period …….…..... 56 Figure 4 – The distribution of artefactual types in Voss and Hardanger………….…...……. 56 Figure 5 – Gendering of burials by different means…………………………….……...……. 57 Figure 6 – The gendering of burials divided by period………………………………………. 57 Figure 7 – Dendrogram of the average linkage cluster analysis ………..………..…………. 66 Figure 8 – Iconography of gold bracteates (Hauck et al. 1985:XI,X,27,59;1986:X,39)..…... 85 Figure 9 – D bracteates (Mackeprang 1952:pl. 18).…………………………….……..……. 86
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