Rundkvist 2021 review Viking Age Transformations

Book Reviews 285 outer settlement—ending what one might call the Heuneburg’s town-phase—not only represents the re-occurrence of a traditional spatial structure of an elite hilltop site but also the change of the socio-political organization of society in general. At least, the hypothetical scenario of an internal conflict, in which this destruction represents an uprising of local elites against the possibly unwelcome political concept of a town perpetuated by south Alpine newcomers some generations earlier, appears to be an attractive proposition—the authors remain vague about this point (p. 91), which will need future research. As I have already stated at the beginning of this review, the book represents an excellent overview of most impressive interdisciplinary research, but also heritage management in Central Europe of the last decades. The book telling the story of the Heuneburg and its wider context should be read or bought— since it is not available online—by every Iron Age scholar or student. REFERENCES Hansen, L. & Pare, C.F.E. 2008. Der Glauberg in seinem mikro- und makroregionalen Kontext. In: D. Krausse, ed. Frühe Zentralisierungsund Urbanisierungsprozesse: zur Genese und Entwicklung frühkeltischer Fürstensitze und ihres territorialen Umlandes. Kolloquium des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms 1171 in Blaubeuren, 9. –11. Oktober 2006 (Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 101). Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, pp. 57–96. Kimmig, W. 1983. Die griechische Kolonisation im westlichen Mittelmeergebiet und ihre Wirkung auf die Landschaften des westlichen Mitteleuropa. Jahrbuch des RömischGermanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz, 30: 5–78. Krausse, D., ed. 2008. Frühe Zentralisierungsund Urbanisierungsprozesse: zur Genese und Entwicklung frühkeltischer Fürstensitze und ihres territorialen Umlandes. Kolloquium des DFG-Schwerpunktprogramms 1171 in Blaubeuren, 9. –11. Oktober 2006 (Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg 101). Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag. Krausse, D. & Beilharz, D., eds. 2009. ‘Fürstensitze‘ und Zentralorte der frühen Kelten. Abschlusstagung des DFGSchwerpunktprogramms 1171 in Stuttgart, 12.–15. Oktober 2009 (Forschungen und Berichte zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte in Baden-Württemberg). Stuttgart: Theiss Verlag, pp. 120–21. Poux, M. 2004. L’Âge du Vin. Rites de boisson, festins et libations en Gaule indépendente (Protohistorie Europénne 8). Montagnac: Editions Monique Mergoil. Verger, St. 2007–2008. Enterré dans le souvenir de la maison. A propos du tumulus 4 de la Heuneburg dans la haute vallée du Danube. In: Bartoloni, G. & Benedettini, M.G., eds. Sepolti tra i vivi. Evidenza ed interpretazione di contesti funerari in abitato (Scienze dell’Antichità 14). Roma: Edizione Quasar, pp. 919–58. CAROLA METZNER-NEBELSICK Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.12 Zanette T. Glørstad and Kjetil Loftsgarden, eds. Viking Age Transformations: Trade, Craft and Resources in Western Scandinavia (Culture, Environment and Adaptations in the North. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017, xii and 289pp., 71 b/w illustr., hbk, ISBN 9781472470775) With Scandinavia’s first towns (Ribe c. 710, Birka c. 750) and the influx of Islamic silver coinage from c. 790 onward, the region’s archaeological record changes Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Durham University Library, on 03 May 2021 at 11:34:29, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.13 286 dramatically and irrevocably. Long-distance commodity trade and serial production mean that there is new material to study and new questions to answer, because the Scandinavians were doing new things. In the absence of much relevant source material, almost no Scandinavian scholars think about the economics of the seventh century. As this solid and comprehensive anthology of Viking Age economics in Norway shows, things were quite different from the eighth century on. Viking Age Transformations contains thirteen papers developed from presentations given at a 2013 conference organised by the Centre for Viking Age Studies at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. All eighteen contributors but one are based in Norway itself. The book’s main title might mean anything or nothing, but it could have been worse. The conference was titled ‘The Power of the Market’, and the volume’s editors certainly chose wisely when they avoided that in the book title. The introduction is dated May 2016. Resource extraction, transportation, crafts and trade: the book covers most aspects of its theme. There are discussions of judicial districts and assemblies, annual skeid horse-races, announcements of new coinage, iron production, copper alloy casting, soapstone, quernstones, whetstones, stone baking trays, reindeer hunting, fur trapping, and many less visible socio-economic activities. Agriculture, the local base of the whole system, is however almost invisible. Four papers in particular caught my attention. The biggest piece of news here is the craft and trade site of Heimdalsjordet (Vestfold, Østlandet): Kaupang’s little sister, located within clear view of the Gokstad ship barrow. In Chapter 11, Jan Bill and Christian Løchsen Rødsrud detail the results of geophysical surveys and excavations carried out in 2012–13. The site is European Journal of Archaeology 24 (2) 2021 only fifteen kilometres north of Kaupang and was active probably between c. AD 700 and AD 1000, before and after its larger sibling. Heimdalsjordet too sports a wide and rich range of find categories and corresponding activities. The coin assemblage and pottery types suggest that its patrons cultivated east Scandinavian contacts while Kaupang’s lords looked toward the south. Perhaps these finds correspond to a Norwegian lineage versus the Danish kings, say the authors. Small nearby cemeteries composed mostly of small-boat inhumations complete the picture. Of course, there must be a mead-hall waiting to be found somewhere nearby, as the authors point out. The place-name Heimdalsjordet, however, has nothing to do with Heimdallr, the Watchful God. As far as I can judge, it would mean roughly ‘Home Vale Field’. In early 2021 this paper remains the most comprehensive publication on the site, which becomes an instant locus classicus. When you excavate a Viking Age or later urban site in Norway, soapstone vessels are a ubiquitous local product, but every single potsherd is a continental import. There were no local potters for centuries! In her impressively labourintensive paper about the materials available in post-Viking Age towns, Gitte Hansen (Ch. 4) reveals that this imported pottery has quite different origins in the towns of southwestern and southeastern Norway. (Remember, Vestlandet and Østlandet are both part of long, slender Norway’s south-west end.) Stavanger is not very far by sea from Tønsberg, but apparently few foreign ship crews either from the south-west or the south-east bothered to make the extra effort once they had made landfall in Norway. They knew with whom they wanted to trade, much, in fact, like many crews would row past Kaupang to get to Gokstad and Heimdalsjordet. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Durham University Library, on 03 May 2021 at 11:34:29, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.13 Book Reviews The weighing of silver is an inescapable theme in the study of Viking Age economics. Two papers deal with peripheral settlement districts in the Norwegian orbit where people’s lifeways and identities appear to have been focussed on interregional trade. So much so that these areas constitute major concentrations on Scandinavia’s map of where we find hack silver, coins, scales, and weights in graves. Olof Holm (Ch. 3) writes about the Lake Storsjön area in Jämtland, current Sweden, the province just south-east over the mountain passes from Trøndelag. This area was not involved in any particular Viking Age state formation project. Zanette T. Glørstad and Camilla C. Wenn (Ch. 10) write about the Setesdal valley, due east and uphill from Stavanger. Burials with silver, scales, and weights cluster here around Valle, but the paper deals mainly with an isolated cemetery at Langeid, excavated in 2011. For more about this informative site, see Wenn et al. (2016). For recent work on the silver economy in general, see Kershaw & Williams (2019). Overall, the English is quite good, but one recurring error that mars several papers is worth pointing out: the misuse of the term ‘the outfield’. To a UK reader this is a peripheral part of a farm’s land, to which the owners can walk from their house in less than twenty minutes. To a US reader the word probably conjures up images of baseball. Context shows however that 287 throughout the book it is a mistranslation of the Norwegian word utmarka: a distant wooded mountainous area with reindeer, bog iron, and fur trapping, the property of no-one in particular. A better English term might simply be ‘the wilderness’. All in all, this is a useful and commendable anthology that serves well as an entry point into the field of study for English-speaking readers. A thirteen-page thematic index adds substantially to its value. I wish more work like this were being done in Sweden. It would be a shame if the vague main title with its possibly shamanistic connotations kept readers from finding this book. REFERENCES Kershaw, J. & Williams, G. 2019. Silver, Butter, Cloth: Monetary and Social Economies in the Viking Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wenn, C.C., Glørstad, Z.T. & Loftsgarden, K. 2016. Rapport. Arkeologisk utgravning. Rv. 9 Krokå-Langeid. Del II: Gravfelt fra vikingtid. Langeid Øvre, 2/1, Bygland k., Aust- Agder. Oslo: Museum of Cultural History [accessed 19 February 2021]. Available at: <www.duo.uio.no/handle/ 10852/50217> MARTIN RUNDKVIST Uniwersytet Łódzki, Poland doi:10.1017/eaa.2021.13 Hannah Cobb and Karina Croucher. Assembling Archaeology: Teaching, Practice, and Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, xi and 214pp., 10 figs, hbk, ISBN 9780198784258) On the 19th of January 2021, the UK government announced that funding for archaeology departments under the Higher Education Teaching Grant would be cut by fifty per cent, with the justification that the ‘priorities of the nation’ are ‘healthcare, Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Durham University Library, on 03 May 2021 at 11:34:29, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/eaa.2021.13