Northern Europe (Germania, Scandinavia, North Sea and Baltic Lands) (up to c. 500)
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Gendering the Nordic Past
Dialogues between Perspectives
The idea of the Nordic nations as champions of gender equality is firmly rooted in today’s perceptions of society. But how does such a modern comprehension influence our views of history? Does our understanding of gender impact on how we see the past? And do the ways in which we gender the past have an effect on our present identities?
From the Stone Age to the Early Modern period and from warriors and queens to households and burials this groundbreaking volume draws together research conducted as part of the project Gendering the Nordic Past an inter-Nordic collaboration aimed at (re)evaluating and revitalizing the field of gender studies in the region. The chapters gathered in this volume contributed by archaeologists and historians theologians art historians and specialists in gender studies aim to offer novel perspectives on the ways in which we gender the past. While many of the chapters focus explicitly on the Nordic countries comparisons are also drawn with other regions in order to provide both internal and external views on the role of the collective past in present Nordic identities. The result presented here is an essential dialogue into the importance of gender in creating and maintaining past identities as well as a new understanding of how the identities that we construct for the past can relate to heritage narratives.
Bear and Human
Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times, with Emphasis on Northern Europe
Bears have throughout human history been admired and feared by humans in equal measure with an interrelationship between the two species identifiable from pre-modern times through a wealth of material items as well as from cult sites sacral remains images and written sources. This unique interdisciplinary volume draws together sixty-four contributions by experts from across a range of fields in order to shed light on the complex connections between bears and humans in a period extending from the pre-modern into modern times and across an area stretching from England into Russia. From bear biology (represented by work from the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project) and archaeo(zoo)logy to art history and from history of religion to philology the research gathered across this three-volume set explores a wide-range of subjects. Among them are the bear in biology bears and animal agency bear remains in graves and churches the role of bears in religious beliefs (including berserker and bear ceremonialism) bears in literature the philology underpinning why bear is a taboo word and the image of the bear in rock art as well as political iconography up to the present day. Together these wide-ranging but closely thematic texts combine to produce a ground-breaking new work that will prove fundamental in understanding the human connection with this remarkable animal.
Contrasts of the Nordic Bronze Age
Essays in Honour of Christopher Prescott
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.
Landscapes or seascapes?
The history of the coastal environment in the North Sea area reconsidered
This volume deals with the geographical evolution of the coastal areas adjacent to the North Sea with a focus upon the last two thousand years. Although many articles are reworked in a fundamental way most of them are the result of a conference which took place in 2010 at Ghent University (Belgium) and which was actually the third in a series of symposiums on the same broad theme. The first took place in 1958 and the second in 1978. Recognized specialists were invited to present their research in a variety of fields relating to the subject. The various disciplines in which the coastal plains are studied too often remain within their own borders and so we have set out to thoroughly interweave them in the hope that this will spur greater interdisciplinary cooperation. This collection of texts is intended to appeal not just to experts in historical geography but to historians and scientists working in any field who wish to gain insights into the present ‘state of play’.
Detailed geological research about many areas provided new data and researchers gradually gained a better understanding of the close relationship between the processes of deposition sea-level change and land formation taking place across multiple regions. In the same time historical and archaeological research also evolved. Most significantly ideas regarding the chronology of human occupation have changed a lot. This scope of the research collected in this volume is important because it has increasingly become evident that land loss and gain were the results of regional factors including and especially human activities. Moreover it is now clear that humans devised survival strategies and thus organized their activities in relation to the environment on a regional basis which means that the causes of local changes must have been both natural and socio-historical. It has now become clearer than ever that there is no single chronological scheme capable of explaining the coastal evolution across the entirety of the North Sea area.
Erik Thoen is professor in rural history and environmental history at Ghent University (B) and co-ordinator of the CORN network.
Guus J. Borger is emeritus professor in historical geography at the University of Amsterdam and the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Adriaan M.J. de Kraker is senior researcher in historical geography at the VU University Amsterdam (NL).
Tim Soens is professor in rural history and environmental history at the University of Antwerp (B).
Dries Tys is professor at the Brussels Free University (VUB) (B).
Lies Vervaet is assistant specialised in rural history at Ghent University (B).
Henk J.T. Weerts is senior researcher paleogeography at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands.