Per Ditlef Fredriksen | University of Oslo (original) (raw)
Papers by Per Ditlef Fredriksen
Antiquity, 2024
Comparative studies of inequality based on archaeological data rely on universal notions of statu... more Comparative studies of inequality based on archaeological data rely on universal notions of status or prestige that are not always meaningful across diverse cultural contexts. Here, the authors evaluate three broadly contemporaneous urban communities (Marothodi, Molokwane and Kaditshwene) in the southern African interior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD. The study combines a statistical measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, with insights from the rich ethnohistorical archives of African knowledge systems. The results suggest markedly different levels of inequality, but contextualisation points to divergent social strategies for settlement organisation and for managing sociopolitical insecurity. The findings raise important questions about cross-cultural indices of social inequality.
Primitive Tider, 2023
Rogaland in southwest Norway was a core production area for bucket-shaped pottery throughout the ... more Rogaland in southwest Norway was a core production area for bucket-shaped pottery throughout the ca. 200-year period spanned by these finds. Largely thanks to Elna Siv Kristoffersen's work we have a well-developed understanding of the final century of this characteristic Migration Period
find: certain ceramic craft networks rose to prominence, culminating in workshop milieux intimately tied to the formation of central places like those in Jæren, Rogaland from around AD 450/60, eventually making bucket-shaped pots alongside Style I metalwork. This inventive cross-craft
focus notwithstanding, we know less about the first century of production. A recent study suggests that the rise of the Jæren workshop milieux was concurrent with a gradual decline of the Augland ceramic workshop, related to the Oddernes elite milieu in Vest-Agder. Consequently, the areas around and between these two regional nodal points have come to be of particular interest. What happened to connectivity in this hinterland during the emergent first century of bucket-shaped ceramic production? This batch study identifies paste recipes and traces the movements of pots. Cognisant of the lack of comprehensive archaeometric studies, partly due to costs, we
present a transferrable and relatively inexpensive approach that combines qualitative macroscopy with quantitative analysis of data from a handheld X-ray fluorescence (h-XRF) device.
Southern African Humanities, 2023
Among Simon Hall's influential contributions to historical archaeology are two research agendas: ... more Among Simon Hall's influential contributions to historical archaeology are two research agendas: the need to focus attention on lower scalar levels of analysis, and broadening the concept of ceramic style to include less visible technological qualities. The latter is of particular importance to the stylistically bland and less decorated assemblages from the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Combining and developing the two agendas further, this article presents a new set of analyses of ceramic material from the stonewalled sites Marothodi and Lebenya in the Magaliesberg region, dating to the decades leading up to the difaqane in the 1820s. We explore households as flexible spaces for making, creativity and memory-work in turbulent times. The late 18 th and early 19 th centuries saw an accelerated development of pyrotechnologies such as metalworking and ceramics. This happened in tandem with significant changes to the built environment and spatial organisation of the household, which was the primary arena for craft learning. Frequent relocation and alteration of learning spaces put transmission and teacher-apprentice ties under serious strain. Seeking to trace connections across a complex and layered political landscape, we tentatively hypothesise that ceramic craftspeople became relatively less reliant on locally anchored insights and placed more emphasis on sharing knowledge and materials within extended craft-learning networks. The study includes a comparison of the results of petrographic and geochemical laboratory analyses with those from a handheld XRF device. Offering instant feedback while still in the field, such mobile tools can help in developing sampling strategies that also include a higher percentage of undecorated ceramic material.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2020
The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 ye... more The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 years until its demise in the troubled Migration Period. Contrary to previous opinions, we argue that production ended around AD 450–460 and not in the sixth century. Our approach, based on the craft practices, reveals that the introduction of a novel technology accelerated the process, fuelled by a regional power shift that severed once‐resilient ties to south Scandinavia. This outcome is based on the analysis of Augland’s terminal century: 1) re‐analysis of radiocarbon data; 2) ceramic macroscopy; and 3) fine‐sorting of pastes using handheld XRF data.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2020
The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 ye... more The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 years until its demise in the troubled Migration Period. Contrary to previous opinions, we argue that production ended around AD 450-460 and not in the sixth century. Our approach, based on the craft practices, reveals that the introduction of a novel technology accelerated the process, fuelled by a regional power shift that severed once-resilient ties to south Scandinavia. This outcome is based on the analysis of Augland's terminal century: 1) re-analysis of radiocarbon data; 2) ceramic macroscopy; and 3) fine-sorting of pastes using handheld XRF data.
Azania, 2018
This paper presents distribution patterns and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of ... more This paper presents distribution patterns and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of recently excavated faunal remains from two middens at Khami, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Zimbabwe. The middens are dated to c. AD 1475–1650. The results of the analysis indicate that food practices may have differed between high- and low-lying areas of the site, as reflected in the two excavated contexts studied here. δ13C values of serial samples of tooth dentine show that cattle and wild grazers consumed C4 grasses year-round. The availability of rich natural
grazing would have been a considerable attraction to the builders of the site.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017
50 FREE DOWNLOADS FROM THIS LINK: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Vgb7yiXEihU2QXQeznQK/full ... more 50 FREE DOWNLOADS FROM THIS LINK:
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Vgb7yiXEihU2QXQeznQK/full
Despite vibrant paradigmatic shifts in archaeological thought, Norwegian heritage legislation remains unchanged since the 1970s and is anchored in a traditional identity ideology assuming continuous links between contemporary populations and ancient societies. In the context of current and expected major demographic changes as a result of global migration, policy-makers and developers of alternative frameworks face the challenge of epistemic standstill and recycling of ideas. This article examines and seeks insights into causes for the current status, focusing on tensions between paradigms of value and between various levels of heritage management in and around Oslo, one of the fastest growing urban areas in Europe. Combining the discourse theoretical concept of nodal points with the method of qualitative coding analysis, we study responses by heritage management to perceived challenges of globalisation and demographic changes in all available official white papers produced after the year 2000. By reflecting on present narratives, our discussion relates to struggles over defining ‘Norwegianness’ and criticism of such notions. The identification of four levels of tension allows us to centre attention on key issues of importance to the societal aim of including and engaging an increasingly heterogeneous population, and to argue for a bottom-up and recursive approach.
The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmis... more The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft knowledge on the move in the Mopani District of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Workshop collectives bring together and potentially fuse the various knowledges and skills of Tsonga-, Venda- and Sotho-speaking women. However, changes of workspace also imply moving from potters’ respective homestead spaces to open and shared spaces, occasionally furnished and equipped for industrial-like large-scale production. Significantly, various projects supporting local ceramic craftspeople have encouraged and initially funded the production of new forms of clay objects, entailing outside supplies of special clays and new equipment requiring electricity (e.g. potters’ wheels and kilns). Our study explores the range of problem-solving strategies employed after outside support and clay supply has ceased. Some collectives manage well while others struggle. Commonly, while returning to local clay sources for material is straightforward, it is more difficult to resume craftwork in homestead spaces where knowledge/skills once were acquired. A key aspect is ancestors’ continued roles in human/nonhuman interaction. Centring on space/knowledge tension in relation to craft mobility and always-unfolding processes of entangling/disentangling, our discussion has implications for how we understand the term material memory and relate it to material/immaterial heritage.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pa... more To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pattern and the Zimbabwe Pattern for future research and understanding of Iron Age social life in southern Africa? How will alternative approaches enable us to progress beyond the present status of knowledge? While the three last decades of debate have underpinned key aspects of archaeological inquiry, notably questions of social change, gender dynamics, analytical scale and the use of ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological insights, the sometimes entrenched nature of the debate has in other respects hindered development of new approaches and restrained the range of themes and topics scholars engage with. In this article, we identify the issues of analytical scale and recursiveness as key to the development
of future approaches and present an alternative framework through empirically grounded discussion of three central Iron Age themes: ceramics and the microscale, the spatiality of metal production and the temporality of stonewalled architecture.
What do researchers and heritage practitioners do when their concepts of place do not coincide wi... more What do researchers and heritage practitioners do when their concepts of place do not coincide with those held by local communities? Discussing a case study from Mozambique against its wider southern African backdrop, this article argues that professionals cannot overlook the fact that many rural communities in this part of Africa do their version of ‘archaeology’ by reconstructing the past via their ancestors. The primary focus is to establish a ground for epistemic levelling between ‘scientific’ and ‘other’ knowledges and an ensuing heritage ethics from which to articulate a set of key tenets for future engagements with local communities and public archaeology. In order to develop an approach that is inclusive and within the scope of ‘a truly engaged archaeology’, we explore the potential of encounters between different epistemologies, between those of professional practitioners and those of the public they engage with.
We report results fromFE-SEM–EDS, geochemical, mineralogical analyses and Raman spectroscopy of p... more We report results fromFE-SEM–EDS, geochemical, mineralogical analyses and Raman spectroscopy of pottery of
bucket-shaped ceramic from Rogaland (southwestern Norway) dated between the 5th and 6th Century. The
study reveals a very rare pottery composition including asbestos-group minerals and an unusual enrichment
in compatible elements like Cr (8–27× Post Archean average shale (PAS),McLennan et al., 2006), Ni (2–8× normal
shale) and Co (2–3× PAS). X-Rray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy could pinpoint that Ni is introduced
by specific Ni-rich talc mineral and chlorite minerals and Cr occurs in a rare Cr-rich talc, and possibly in a Crchlorite,
these minerals are the most abundant in the pottery, which is supported by strong enrichment in Mg
(10–20× PAS). The addition ofMg, Cr,Ni and Co and other compatible trace elements is to our current knowledge
not caused by anthropogenic activity but related to the usedmaterials,which are alteration products ofmafic and
ultramafic rocks or genetically related to mafic and ultramafic rocks. Rocks of this type are exposed in vicinity of
the sampling areas in a region called Karmøy, hosting a world famous ophiolite complex, which is identified as
the major source for the mafic and ultramafic component, as the next succession of a similar composition is far
further north located in Norway and a number of rock types on Karmøy matches the chemical composition of
the pottery. The here reported composition is spectacular and extremely rare – if ever found – in pottery. Our
study shows that unusual material sources have been used in pottery production, and this opens for discussion
whether the materialswere deliberately selected by the manufacturers, thereby expressing a specific social function,
in a time period where more functional clay types and additives, and certainly functional and sufficient for
use in pottery, where abundant in areas of Rogaland closer to where the pots were found.
Journal of Social Archaeology, Oct 2011
South African Archaeological Bulletin, 2007
Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2006
Antiquity, 2024
Comparative studies of inequality based on archaeological data rely on universal notions of statu... more Comparative studies of inequality based on archaeological data rely on universal notions of status or prestige that are not always meaningful across diverse cultural contexts. Here, the authors evaluate three broadly contemporaneous urban communities (Marothodi, Molokwane and Kaditshwene) in the southern African interior in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries AD. The study combines a statistical measure of inequality, the Gini coefficient, with insights from the rich ethnohistorical archives of African knowledge systems. The results suggest markedly different levels of inequality, but contextualisation points to divergent social strategies for settlement organisation and for managing sociopolitical insecurity. The findings raise important questions about cross-cultural indices of social inequality.
Primitive Tider, 2023
Rogaland in southwest Norway was a core production area for bucket-shaped pottery throughout the ... more Rogaland in southwest Norway was a core production area for bucket-shaped pottery throughout the ca. 200-year period spanned by these finds. Largely thanks to Elna Siv Kristoffersen's work we have a well-developed understanding of the final century of this characteristic Migration Period
find: certain ceramic craft networks rose to prominence, culminating in workshop milieux intimately tied to the formation of central places like those in Jæren, Rogaland from around AD 450/60, eventually making bucket-shaped pots alongside Style I metalwork. This inventive cross-craft
focus notwithstanding, we know less about the first century of production. A recent study suggests that the rise of the Jæren workshop milieux was concurrent with a gradual decline of the Augland ceramic workshop, related to the Oddernes elite milieu in Vest-Agder. Consequently, the areas around and between these two regional nodal points have come to be of particular interest. What happened to connectivity in this hinterland during the emergent first century of bucket-shaped ceramic production? This batch study identifies paste recipes and traces the movements of pots. Cognisant of the lack of comprehensive archaeometric studies, partly due to costs, we
present a transferrable and relatively inexpensive approach that combines qualitative macroscopy with quantitative analysis of data from a handheld X-ray fluorescence (h-XRF) device.
Southern African Humanities, 2023
Among Simon Hall's influential contributions to historical archaeology are two research agendas: ... more Among Simon Hall's influential contributions to historical archaeology are two research agendas: the need to focus attention on lower scalar levels of analysis, and broadening the concept of ceramic style to include less visible technological qualities. The latter is of particular importance to the stylistically bland and less decorated assemblages from the 18 th and 19 th centuries. Combining and developing the two agendas further, this article presents a new set of analyses of ceramic material from the stonewalled sites Marothodi and Lebenya in the Magaliesberg region, dating to the decades leading up to the difaqane in the 1820s. We explore households as flexible spaces for making, creativity and memory-work in turbulent times. The late 18 th and early 19 th centuries saw an accelerated development of pyrotechnologies such as metalworking and ceramics. This happened in tandem with significant changes to the built environment and spatial organisation of the household, which was the primary arena for craft learning. Frequent relocation and alteration of learning spaces put transmission and teacher-apprentice ties under serious strain. Seeking to trace connections across a complex and layered political landscape, we tentatively hypothesise that ceramic craftspeople became relatively less reliant on locally anchored insights and placed more emphasis on sharing knowledge and materials within extended craft-learning networks. The study includes a comparison of the results of petrographic and geochemical laboratory analyses with those from a handheld XRF device. Offering instant feedback while still in the field, such mobile tools can help in developing sampling strategies that also include a higher percentage of undecorated ceramic material.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2020
The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 ye... more The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 years until its demise in the troubled Migration Period. Contrary to previous opinions, we argue that production ended around AD 450–460 and not in the sixth century. Our approach, based on the craft practices, reveals that the introduction of a novel technology accelerated the process, fuelled by a regional power shift that severed once‐resilient ties to south Scandinavia. This outcome is based on the analysis of Augland’s terminal century: 1) re‐analysis of radiocarbon data; 2) ceramic macroscopy; and 3) fine‐sorting of pastes using handheld XRF data.
Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2020
The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 ye... more The unique ceramic production site at Augland in southernmost Norway thrived for more than 250 years until its demise in the troubled Migration Period. Contrary to previous opinions, we argue that production ended around AD 450-460 and not in the sixth century. Our approach, based on the craft practices, reveals that the introduction of a novel technology accelerated the process, fuelled by a regional power shift that severed once-resilient ties to south Scandinavia. This outcome is based on the analysis of Augland's terminal century: 1) re-analysis of radiocarbon data; 2) ceramic macroscopy; and 3) fine-sorting of pastes using handheld XRF data.
Azania, 2018
This paper presents distribution patterns and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of ... more This paper presents distribution patterns and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope measurements of recently excavated faunal remains from two middens at Khami, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Zimbabwe. The middens are dated to c. AD 1475–1650. The results of the analysis indicate that food practices may have differed between high- and low-lying areas of the site, as reflected in the two excavated contexts studied here. δ13C values of serial samples of tooth dentine show that cattle and wild grazers consumed C4 grasses year-round. The availability of rich natural
grazing would have been a considerable attraction to the builders of the site.
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2017
50 FREE DOWNLOADS FROM THIS LINK: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Vgb7yiXEihU2QXQeznQK/full ... more 50 FREE DOWNLOADS FROM THIS LINK:
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/Vgb7yiXEihU2QXQeznQK/full
Despite vibrant paradigmatic shifts in archaeological thought, Norwegian heritage legislation remains unchanged since the 1970s and is anchored in a traditional identity ideology assuming continuous links between contemporary populations and ancient societies. In the context of current and expected major demographic changes as a result of global migration, policy-makers and developers of alternative frameworks face the challenge of epistemic standstill and recycling of ideas. This article examines and seeks insights into causes for the current status, focusing on tensions between paradigms of value and between various levels of heritage management in and around Oslo, one of the fastest growing urban areas in Europe. Combining the discourse theoretical concept of nodal points with the method of qualitative coding analysis, we study responses by heritage management to perceived challenges of globalisation and demographic changes in all available official white papers produced after the year 2000. By reflecting on present narratives, our discussion relates to struggles over defining ‘Norwegianness’ and criticism of such notions. The identification of four levels of tension allows us to centre attention on key issues of importance to the societal aim of including and engaging an increasingly heterogeneous population, and to argue for a bottom-up and recursive approach.
The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmis... more The relocation of ceramic craft activities to workshops creates new arenas for knowledge transmission and the acquisition of skills. But it may also cause tensions, due to the breakage or severance of ties to the spaces previously associated with craft learning. Exploring the interplay between the practice and knowledge of ceramic technology on the one hand and the spaces in which technology unfolds on the other, this article focuses on craft knowledge on the move in the Mopani District of Limpopo Province, South Africa. Workshop collectives bring together and potentially fuse the various knowledges and skills of Tsonga-, Venda- and Sotho-speaking women. However, changes of workspace also imply moving from potters’ respective homestead spaces to open and shared spaces, occasionally furnished and equipped for industrial-like large-scale production. Significantly, various projects supporting local ceramic craftspeople have encouraged and initially funded the production of new forms of clay objects, entailing outside supplies of special clays and new equipment requiring electricity (e.g. potters’ wheels and kilns). Our study explores the range of problem-solving strategies employed after outside support and clay supply has ceased. Some collectives manage well while others struggle. Commonly, while returning to local clay sources for material is straightforward, it is more difficult to resume craftwork in homestead spaces where knowledge/skills once were acquired. A key aspect is ancestors’ continued roles in human/nonhuman interaction. Centring on space/knowledge tension in relation to craft mobility and always-unfolding processes of entangling/disentangling, our discussion has implications for how we understand the term material memory and relate it to material/immaterial heritage.
Cambridge Archaeological Journal
To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pa... more To what extent do we need structuralist cognitive settlement models such as the Central Cattle Pattern and the Zimbabwe Pattern for future research and understanding of Iron Age social life in southern Africa? How will alternative approaches enable us to progress beyond the present status of knowledge? While the three last decades of debate have underpinned key aspects of archaeological inquiry, notably questions of social change, gender dynamics, analytical scale and the use of ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological insights, the sometimes entrenched nature of the debate has in other respects hindered development of new approaches and restrained the range of themes and topics scholars engage with. In this article, we identify the issues of analytical scale and recursiveness as key to the development
of future approaches and present an alternative framework through empirically grounded discussion of three central Iron Age themes: ceramics and the microscale, the spatiality of metal production and the temporality of stonewalled architecture.
What do researchers and heritage practitioners do when their concepts of place do not coincide wi... more What do researchers and heritage practitioners do when their concepts of place do not coincide with those held by local communities? Discussing a case study from Mozambique against its wider southern African backdrop, this article argues that professionals cannot overlook the fact that many rural communities in this part of Africa do their version of ‘archaeology’ by reconstructing the past via their ancestors. The primary focus is to establish a ground for epistemic levelling between ‘scientific’ and ‘other’ knowledges and an ensuing heritage ethics from which to articulate a set of key tenets for future engagements with local communities and public archaeology. In order to develop an approach that is inclusive and within the scope of ‘a truly engaged archaeology’, we explore the potential of encounters between different epistemologies, between those of professional practitioners and those of the public they engage with.
We report results fromFE-SEM–EDS, geochemical, mineralogical analyses and Raman spectroscopy of p... more We report results fromFE-SEM–EDS, geochemical, mineralogical analyses and Raman spectroscopy of pottery of
bucket-shaped ceramic from Rogaland (southwestern Norway) dated between the 5th and 6th Century. The
study reveals a very rare pottery composition including asbestos-group minerals and an unusual enrichment
in compatible elements like Cr (8–27× Post Archean average shale (PAS),McLennan et al., 2006), Ni (2–8× normal
shale) and Co (2–3× PAS). X-Rray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy could pinpoint that Ni is introduced
by specific Ni-rich talc mineral and chlorite minerals and Cr occurs in a rare Cr-rich talc, and possibly in a Crchlorite,
these minerals are the most abundant in the pottery, which is supported by strong enrichment in Mg
(10–20× PAS). The addition ofMg, Cr,Ni and Co and other compatible trace elements is to our current knowledge
not caused by anthropogenic activity but related to the usedmaterials,which are alteration products ofmafic and
ultramafic rocks or genetically related to mafic and ultramafic rocks. Rocks of this type are exposed in vicinity of
the sampling areas in a region called Karmøy, hosting a world famous ophiolite complex, which is identified as
the major source for the mafic and ultramafic component, as the next succession of a similar composition is far
further north located in Norway and a number of rock types on Karmøy matches the chemical composition of
the pottery. The here reported composition is spectacular and extremely rare – if ever found – in pottery. Our
study shows that unusual material sources have been used in pottery production, and this opens for discussion
whether the materialswere deliberately selected by the manufacturers, thereby expressing a specific social function,
in a time period where more functional clay types and additives, and certainly functional and sufficient for
use in pottery, where abundant in areas of Rogaland closer to where the pots were found.
Journal of Social Archaeology, Oct 2011
South African Archaeological Bulletin, 2007
Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2006
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, 2023
Pottery has been part of daily life in southern Africa for the last two millennia. The frequent o... more Pottery has been part of daily life in southern Africa for the last two millennia. The frequent occurrence at settlement sites and its resistance to decay makes pottery the most common proxy for past food-producing communities (farmers and livestock herders), who made containers for cooking, serving, and storing foods and liquids. Provided that pots and sherds have enough diagnostic features to indicate décor patterns and vessel shape, trained eyes can get an instant and literally cost-free peek into past movement and interaction. Various material sciences offer high-precision dating and insights into less visible characteristics, and ethnographic insights are helpful for understanding more intangible aspects, such as the organization of production, pots’ roles in social practices and belief systems, and the transmission of knowledge and skills through apprenticeship. Potting has been a highly gendered activity, and attention to social identity is instrumental in widening the range of lenses through which archaeologists view past material culture. In this manner, by focusing on skilled craft networks dominated by women, ceramic research can provide a critical corrective alternative to more traditional top-down narratives that trace the evolution and interaction of (male) elites.
However, the European and North American legacy of archaeological classification in southern Africa cannot be overlooked. Ceramic classification may still unwillingly project a Western-centered understanding of the human condition, mobility, and social change. While unacceptable labels that refer to outmoded notions of tribalism have long been replaced by more neutral terms, this does not mean that ceramics provide archaeology with a neutral “tracking device.” A continual key challenge for practitioners in southern Africa is to situate ceramic analysis within a wider thematic and disciplinary nexus in order to construct convincing deep time narratives while also exploring new pathways to insights that can give voices to otherwise silent or subaltern members of past societies.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, 2023
Studies of social practices that include the making and use of ceramics constitute a significant ... more Studies of social practices that include the making and use of ceramics constitute a significant part of the subfield of ethnoarchaeology. Pottery is still the archaeological artifact par excellence in many parts of the world, not least in Africa. Because of its omnipresence, pottery not only persists as a convenient way of dating but is also a frequently used point of entry to meaning in the archaeological record. Ethnoarchaeology gained momentum in the 1960s to improve reasoning and inference, by conducting studies of 21st-century practices viewed as providing analogical insights of value for archaeology. Needless to say, this studying of Others in the 21st century to understand Others in the past is a source of severe critique. However, since the late 1990s ethnoarchaeology has transcended the handmaiden role. The debates are not only critical but also vibrant and forward-looking. Key issues relate to ethics, the use and continued development of postcolonial critique, the archaeology of technology, and new forms of interdisciplinarity in the wake of increasing amounts of data coming from laboratory disciplines. The latter issue compels the question what a "slow" science field like ethnoarchaeology can and should offer, not least since there is a clear tendency for modeling and syntheses of past societal change to be constantly "lagging behind." Viewing research within the field in Africa so far in the early 21st century against a geographically wider and temporally deeper backdrop, comprising key developments in the research field globally since the 1960s: what are its main contributions and challenges? What is the status in the early 21st century, and what can and should the near future hold?
Contrasts of the Nordic Bronze Age. Essays in Honour of Christopher Prescott, 2020
Norske Kunsthåndverkeres Årsutstilling, 2021
The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts Annual Exhibition, 2021
Communities and Cultural Heritage: Global Issues, Local Values, 2021
The primary case study in this chapter is based on recent fieldwork in south-western Zimbabwe. Th... more The primary case study in this chapter is based on recent fieldwork in south-western Zimbabwe. The rural area has a history of relocation and translocality that results in novel practices. Although predominantly Ndebele-speaking, the community is highly multi-lingual. A significant number of current local residents have only recently settled in the area, for various reasons. This study centres on locals participating in ceramics production workshops, instigated and aided by an external project with the aim of supporting local capacity-building. We explore the aftermath of such well-meant initiatives, after outside support has ceased. This study facilitates a comparison with a similar project across the Limpopo River border, in neighbouring South Africa. For example, a common challenge in both instances is what the term ‘local’ means to different people. In some instances, people classified as ‘local’ felt that the term did not apply to them, with the perception that others in the community were ‘more local’. It is important for craft traditions to be anchored in a deep past and thus for the items that craftspeople make to look old and be ‘locally made’. This study offers a critical view of how local community dynamics and knowledge change and adapt to new situations in unexpected ways, how outside interventions become catalysts for local invention, and how various and often dissonant voices relate to issues that have to do with heritage and the past.
The pasts and presence of art in South Africa. Technologies, ontologies and agents, 2020
Materialities of Passing. Explorations in Transformation, Transition and Transience
Wynne-Jones, S. & Fleisher, J. (eds) 2015 Theory in Africa, Africa in Theory: Locating Meaning in Archaeology
UBAS Nordic vol. 3 (University of Bergen), 2006
The Archaeology of Northern Europe (TANE 1), 2020
This innovative volume draws on a range of materials and places to explore the disparate facets o... more This innovative volume draws on a range of materials and places to explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities.
The Bronze Age in Northern Europe was a place of diversity and contrast, an era that saw movements and changes not just of peoples, but of cultures, beliefs, and socio-political systems, and that led to the forging of ontological ideas materialized in landscapes, bodies, and technologies. Drawing on a range of materials and places, the innovative contributions gathered here in this volume explore the disparate facets of Bronze Age society across the Nordic region through the key themes of time and trajectory, rituals and everyday life, and encounters and identities. The contributions explore how and why society evolved over time, from the changing nature of sea travel to new technologies in house building, and from advances in lithic production to evolving burial practices and beliefs in the afterlife.
This edited collection honours the ground-breaking research of Professor Christopher Prescott, an outstanding figure in the study of the Bronze Age north, and it takes as its inspiration the diversity, interdisciplinarity, and vitality of his own research in order to make a major new contribution to the field, and to shed new light on a Bronze Age full of contrasts and connections.
Cambridge Monographs in African Archaeology , 2012
UBAS Hovedfag/Master, 2005
by Marie D Amundsen, Unn Pedersen, Dagfinn Skre, Frode Iversen, Jan Bill, Zanette Glørstad, svein harald gullbekk, Marianne Hem Eriksen, Hanne Lovise Aannestad, Per Ditlef Fredriksen, and Marianne Vedeler