The Agrarian Life of the North 2000 bc–ad 1000 Studies in Rural Settlement and Farming in Norway Frode Iversen & Håkan Petersson Eds. THE AGRARIAN LIFE OF THE NORTH 2000 BC –AD 1000 Studies in rural settlement and farming in Norway Frode Iversen & Håkan Petersson (Eds.) © Frode Iversen and Håkan Petersson, 2017 ISBN: 978-82-8314-099-6 This work is protected under the provisions of the Norwegian Copyright Act (Act No. 2 of May 12, 1961, relating to Copyright in Literary, Scientific and Artistic Works) and published Open Access under the terms of a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This license allows third parties to freely copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format as well as remix, transform or build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial purposes, provided the work is properly attributed to the author(s), including a link to the license, and any changes that may have been made are thoroughly indicated. The attribution can be provided in any reasonable manner, however, in no way that suggests the author(s) or the publisher endorses the third party or the third party’s use of the work. Third parties are prohibited from applying legal terms or technological measures that restrict others from doing anything permitted under the terms of the license. Note that the license may not provide all of the permissions necessary for an intended reuse; other rights, for example publicity, privacy, or moral rights, may limit third party use of the material. Reconstructed Bronze-Age farm at Landa, Forsand, Rogaland. Front-page: Profile of a reconstructed roof at Landa. Photo: Åge Pedseren. Backside: Cultivation experiments at Landa. Spelt (Triticum spelta), or dinkel wheat, was an important staple in Scandinavia from the Bronze Age to the Medieval Period. It has stiffer straw than oats, and is not ruined by bad weather. Photo: Sverre Bakkevig. Both photos: Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 Black and white photo page 8: The excavation at Moer, Ås, 1997. Moer is one of the most thoroughly investigated Early Iron Age settlements in south-eastern Norway. Photo: Knut Erik Fønstelien. Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. CC BY-SA 4.0 English translations: Sean D. Denham, Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, & Fredrik Sundman, Orkney Proofreading: James Redmond & Sean D. Denham, Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger Design and typesetting: Rune Eilertsen Font: Adobe Caslon Pro 11/14 Portal Akademisk Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP CONTENTS PREFACE 7 LONG TIME – LONG HOUSE 11 Kristin Armstrong Oma EFFECT OF TEMPERATURE CHANGE ON IRON AGE CEREAL PRODUCTION AND SETTLEMENT PATTERNS IN MID-NORWAY 27 Arne Anderson Stamnes ESTATE DIVISION: SOCIAL COHESION IN THE AFTERMATH OF AD 536–7 41 Frode Iversen WHY DID POTTERY PRODUCTION CEASE IN NORWAY DURING THE TRANSITION TO THE LATE IRON AGE? 77 Christian Løchsen Rødsrud RELATIONS BETWEEN BURIALS AND BUILDINGS IN THE IRON AGE OF SOUTHWEST NORWAY 93 Barbro Dahl COOKING AND FEASTING: CHANGES IN FOOD PRACTICE IN THE IRON AGE 117 Grethe Bjørkan Bukkemoen HOT ROCKS! BEER BREWING ON VIKING AND MEDIEVAL AGE FARMS IN TRØNDELAG 133 Geir Grønnesby FARM – MANOR – ESTATE: AGRICULTURAL LANDSCAPE AND SETTLEMENT AT HUNDVÅG, SOUTHWEST NORWAY 151 Trond Meling A LATE BRONZE AGE SHEEP FARM NORTH OF THE ARCTIC CIRCLE? 173 Christin E. Jensen | Johan E. Arntzen IRON AGE BUILDING TRADITIONS IN EASTERN NORWAY: REGIONS AND LANDSCAPES 203 Lars Erik Gjerpe GEOMETRIC OBSERVATIONS REGARDING EARLY IRON AGE LONGHOUSES IN SOUTHWEST NORWAY 221 Theo Gil LATE IRON AGE SETTLEMENT EVIDENCE FROM ROGALAND 241 Even Bjørdal RURAL BUILDINGS FROM THE VIKING AND EARLY MEDIEVAL PERIOD IN CENTRAL NORWAY 275 Raymond Sauvage and Marte Mokkelbost POTENTIAL AND RECOMMENDATIONS: AGRARIAN BOTANICAL DATA FROM WESTERN NORWAY 293 Kari Loe Hjelle | Lisbeth Prøsch-Danielsen | Eli-Christine Soltvedt PREFACE In 2012, The Research Council of Norway (NFR) began funding a large- scale research project at the five archaeological University Museums in Norway, with the aim of increasing collaboration amongst these institutions. The project, Forskning i Felleskap ( Joint Research Programme), covered three different themes, selected by the participants based on their own archaeological research interests. One of these themes was agrarian societies, and this book is a result of the Agrarian network and four years’ worth of meetings and discussions and work. In this, we present current research from the members of the network as well as results from recent excavations concerning settlement, climate and landscape studies of prehistoric and, in some cases, early medieval rural societies in Norway. Our research scope is national, but rather than an overall picture, this collection presents insights into very specific aspects of rural societies stretching from the Late Neolithic to the Early Medieval Period in various parts of Norway. Our presentation of botanical data from Western Norway, while regional in focus, is an exception in that it provides a comprehensive review of all archaeo-botanical analyses conducted over the years in this area, as well as their research potential. This summary is unique in the corpus of Scandinavian archaeo-botanical literature. We, the editors, would like to thank all those who have participated in this research network over the years, The Research Council of Norway for its financial support and, of course, the authors who have contributed to this volume. We would like to thank the university museums and, in particular, Professor Håkon Glørstad, the project leader and initiator of this venture, without whom it would not have been possible. One of the stipulations of the original application to the research council obliges the museums involved to maintain the established networks beyond the funding period. So, to borrow a famous phrase, this is not the end. It is hopefully not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Dear readers, we hope you will enjoy this volume, and look forward to the future research in this area. Christmas 2016 Stavanger/Oslo The editors Knowledge through archaeological rescue investigation Hundreds of fieldworkers take part in the 100–150 archaeological excavations carried out annually in Norway. Without the efforts of the entire archaeological community, the research presented in this book would not have been possible. The words of Director Håkon Glørstad and Vice-director Karl Kallhovd, speak for us all: “Rescue archaeology and research are commonly considered two separate worlds (...) we have made large excavations the engines of research development.” Long time – long house LONG TIME – LONG HOUSE Kristin Armstrong Oma Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger [email protected] ABSTRACT This article deals with the longue durée of the longhouse in terms of agrarian commitments, households and ontology from the prehistory of Rogaland. The three-aisled longhouse is one of the most long-lived forms of dwelling-place known from prehistory, spanning from the Early Bronze Age (1500 BP) through the end of the Viking period (c. AD 1050). During some 2500 years, the architectural outline and form remained surprisingly similar. The three-aisled longhouse is, in terms of human culture, a longue durée institution, a materialisation of a particular lived space. The aim of this article is twofold: First, I explore the tenets of this lived space, and its implications in terms of social practice with a particular regard to the life-space shared by humans and animals inside the longhouse. Further, I examine the dynamics between patterns of change in prehis- toric societies and the longhouse that endures as a basic building block for the farming household. I use the ontological turn as a framework for thinking through both of these topics. I mainly focus on the archaeological record from the Early Bronze Age until the Viking period in Rogaland, SW Norway. THE FARMING PRACTICE AND world – an ontology. In this article I try to tease out ONTOLOGY the ontology of the agrarian commitment as a way Being a farmer is sometimes a tough deal, it entails of life and as manifested materially in the three- the loss of freedom to the agrarian commitment: to aisled longhouses. toil and sweat in the fields, making space, food, fertile Ontology is the study of, and inquiry into, that soil for plants and animals, hoping that they will which is understood as given. By this I mean that it return your efforts manifold. This entails place-mak- grapples with the very foundational building blocks ing, as in carving out a physical space where plants of the world – and moreover, how these building could grow, animals could live, reproduce and graze, blocks are perceived by different cultures. Ontology etc. Such a way of life entails what I term the agrarian is, then, not by its own nature fixed and stable, but commitment, namely a pledge to a way of life in which it appears so by the way it is situated in time-space, farming is the dominant mode of existence, regarding within its own historical-cultural context. economic strategies, social practice and cosmology, Recently, there has been a return to inquiry into all aspects of a fundamental understanding of the ontology in anthropology, and to a minor degree 11  Agrarian life | Kristin Armstrong Oma in archaeology - frequently referred to as the onto- nature of the farming year, but maybe even more logical turn (most notably, Viveiros de Castro 1998; so of the unchangeable nature of that which lies Kohn 2013; Latour 2013). For example, Kohn underneath. There are several strands of evidence (2013) explores ontology as an interconnected web that suggest that underlying the farming year was a of emergent meanings. It is the web of meanings belief in permanence, one cycle carried into another, that give ontological status to beings.