Ceramic
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TRACING CLAY DEPOSITS AND POTTERY WORKSHOPS – THE IMPORTANCE OF COMBINING ARCHAEOLOGY WITH ICP-MA/ES ANALYSES.
Fresh from the printer; FROM THE WHEEL TO THE WORLD. The journey of Rhenish stoneware. Conference proceedings of the international workshop “Rhenish stoneware. Local product – global player“ 1st–2nd of December 2022 at the LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn
This article by Torbjörn Brorsson discusses the importance of combining traditional archaeological research with natural science analyses. Chemical ICP-MA/ES analysis were made of stoneware from production sites in Siegburg, Brühl-Eckdorf, Bonn-Lengsdorf, Bergisch-Gladbach-Paffrath, Langerwehe, Duingen, Einbeck and Großalmerode. The analyses showed a different chemical composition and that it is possible with ICP to identify the different production sites.
Viking age metal craft in Seydisfjörður, Iceland.
Viking Age metalworking was a highly skilled craft that played a significant role in Norse society, from the 8th to the 11th century.
Places of finds of crafts for jewels in bronze, silver or gold were important and they should have been controlled by the elite of the society.
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In Seydisfjörður in eastern Iceland, the largest number of Viking age crucibles has been found, and they are currently the subject of classification and analysis. The work is led by Ragnheidur Traustadottir who is responsible for the excavation and the archaeological research of the site.
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The 200 fragments are put together as long as it is possible, and we calculate that they have belonged to about ten crucibles from the period 940-1100. The study is important to shed light on Seydisfjörður as a central place in eastern Iceland, but also to study the Viking age metalwork in Iceland.
We now know that metals were melted and cast, and, among other things, jewelry was made on the island.
The work will be presented in a future article by Ragnheidur Traustadottir and Torbjörn Brorsson.
New evidence of contacts across the Baltic Sea: Analysis of Kukuliškiai Late Bronze Age pottery
MiglÄ— UrbonaitÄ—-UbÄ— & Torbjörn Brorsson
The Late Bronze Age (1100–500 cal BC) has been the focus of many recent studies in the Baltic region.
The contacts between societies in the Baltic Sea area are identified by bronze, amber, pottery and other artefacts, but there is still little evidence of contact between the western and eastern coasts.
This article presents analysis of a pottery assemblage from the Kukuliškiai hilltop settlement (893–403 cal BC) (Lithuania) and its macroscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-MA/ES) results.
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Macroscopic xamination of its pottery revealed that the assemblage consists of various vessel surface types: smooth (41%), rusticated (11%), Kukuliškiai-Otterböte type (4.5%), striated (13%) and burnished (8%).
The assemblage has more similarities with pottery in Scandinavia and Poland than with the continental Late Bronze Age pottery. The Kukuliškiai pottery and newly dated pottery from western Lithuania shows that rusticated pottery reached the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea much earlier than previously thought – around 800–400 cal BC rather than the end of the 1st millennium BC.
The ICP-MA/ES analysis of a sample of sherds from Kukuliškiai has shown that the vessels were most likely made from partly different clays, collected in the vicinity of the settlement.
This pottery was locally made but the assemblage’s composition and the presence of Kukuliškiai-Otterböte pottery (KOP) suggests intensive cultural exchange between people from the two sides of the Baltic Sea. The group of people that made the ceramics were part of the same cultural group as people who made the same type of pottery in eastern Sweden, Poland and the Åland Islands.
It seems likely that the Kukuliškiai settlement was a place with people of different cultural identities, not just the local one.
Published in Archaeologica Baltica 31, 2024.
The Swedish colonial period in Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy
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The Swedish colonial period in Gustavia, Saint-Barthélemy
The aim for the island was to become a free trade centre with, among other things, trade in slaves, but Gustav III also had plans for the island to be used as a transit station for Swedish goods to the United States and other countries. From 1805, the island was ruled by a Swedish governor and the Swedish West India Company.
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The importance of the colony decreased after several countries in South and Central America became free and general free trade was introduced. In 1878 the island was sold back to France. The Swedish heritage on Saint-Barthélemy is tangible today in the form of, among other things, the capital Gustavia and the three crowns that crown the island's coat of arms. There are also streets called Rue Oscar II, Rue August Nyman and Rue de Pitea.
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In collaboration with French INRAP, a pilot study has been carried out and the aim has been to determine where ten ceramic vessels from Rue Oscar in Gustavia came from. The study has been paid for by the Swedish Antiquities Association and the analyses have shown that there were vessels from the USA, Germany, France and possibly also one of south Swedish provenance. This clearly shows that the islands of the West Indies were of interest to both Europe and the United States.
Innovation processes, knowledge transfer systems and mobility in the South Scandinavian Stone Age
Mobility – of people, ideas and material culture – is a long-established area of ​​research in Stone Age archaeology.
In the last fifteen years, however, migration has gained renewed relevance. The reason is that developments in archaeogenetic (DNA) research have given us new knowledge about human genetic prehistory.
The results show that extensive gene flows and mobility with origins in different times and contexts affected the genetic composition of populations. In the South Scandinavian Stone Age, for example, we see both continuity from earlier hunter and gatherer groups, as well as influences over time linked to agricultural groups in Central Europe and areas north of the Black Sea.
But even though our knowledge has increased in an absolutely fantastic way, archaeology has not yet managed to convert these results into new knowledge and understanding of what actually happened during the Neolithic. This is mainly because the results have not been integrated into archaeological research. The consequence is that we do not yet understand the specific forms of Stone Age mobility with which we are dealing. We also do not understand how variations in different forms of migration processes affected people's lives and material culture or what the consequences were for Stone Age societies.
In our research, we tackle these areas. With a focus on innovation processes and knowledge transmission systems, we investigate new ways of understanding change and continuity in southern Scandinavia's Neolithic period, from approximately 4,100 to 1,700 BCE. We do this by combining results from archaeogenetics (DNA) with results from commissioned archaeological investigations and uniting these in interpretive theoretical perspectives drawn from archaeology, technology-and-society studies and mobility studies.
We explore variations in time and space in terms of mobility, population changes and changes in people's material lives. We do this by using GIS and C14 analysis to study people's use of space and changes in the landscape over time and space. We also carry out specialized technological analysis of Stone Age material culture as well as new archaeogenetic (DNA) analyses. We are innovative in integrating analyses of previously underutilized material from extensive mission archaeological excavations with archaeogenetic data. It gives us unique opportunities for knowledge about variation over time and space.
Based on these analyses, we test theoretical models of migration against our results. The ambition is that our conclusions will explain the meanings that innovation processes and systems for knowledge transfer had in Stone Age mobility. By investigating how mobility was expressed in different places in different contexts and times, our goal is to present new knowledge about and understanding of migration in southern Scandinavia during the Neolithic. We expect our results to inspire new ways of understanding mobility in a long-term perspective, migration in other (pre)historical periods and potentially also in our own time.
Collaborative project between: Linnaeus University, Sydsvensk Arkeologi, Stockholm University and Ceramic Studies.
The Danish ship Gribshunden and its ceramics - 1495
In 1495, the Danish king wrecked his flagship, the Gribshunden, or Griffen, as it is also named. The wreck lies today at a depth of 10 meters at Stora Ekön in Ekösund in the Ronneby archipelago in southern Sweden.
During its lifetime, the ship was approximately 35 meters long and 12 meters wide and the ship type was a carrack. A number of items from the wreck have been salvaged and preserved: cannon floats, windlass, parts of chain mail, crossbow arrows and more. A cannon lavette with fire tubes has been reconstructed in a full-scale model. In August 2015, the ship's bow figure was salvaged.
Ceramic sherds have been found on the wreck, mainly glazed redware and stoneware.
ICP-MA/ES analyses have been performed on pottery vessels, the purpose of which is to determine where the objects were made. The analyses have shown that four of the vessels have a Dutch provenance, one comes from Lower Saxony and four from Schleswig-Holstein. This is an unusual assemblage consisting of only imported vessels and it does not reflect a common Scandinavian pottery material of the late 15th century. One can further note that there is no vessel from Copenhagen or other parts of Zealand, but the only Danish area present was Schleswig-Holstein, which was Danish at the end of the 15th century. Is it possible that the home port of the ship Gribshunden was not Copenhagen but rather Flensburg, Schleswig, Kiel or even Lübeck.
Bild Gribshunden. Ev. Text. A Dutch tripod vessel from the Gribshunden wreck.
