Archaeology

The work is divided into two parts : the first one considers the singular city as a socio-spatial entity, identified through the intervention of the archaeologists' work. Beyond the recent conceptual arguments, it is a question of considering the practice of urban archaeology in its multifaceted aspects, institutional and methodological, before opening a reflection on its current developments in four specific scopes (archaeomorphology, chorematic, buildings archaeology and ancient environment) ; wherein lies a potential widening of the fields, of the approaches and the exploration of new paradigms. The second part considers the city in terms of networks and systems, from a theoretical viewpoint at first and then through three case studies, illustrating the idea that the city does not define itself only by its own characteristics but also, and no doubt chiefly, in the interactive spatial relationships that it entertains with other towns and with the territory.

" 125 sites funéraires datant du haut Moyen Âge dont 84 ont livré des sarcophages de pierre ont pu être recensés en Vienne. 1300 sarcophages issus d’au moins 47 sites répartis sur 35 communes ont pu être étudiés et constituent un des plus importants corpus d’étude de France. Quelques 1500 échantillons (dont l’étude est encore en cours) ont été prélevés sur des cuves et couvercles entiers ou fragmentaires. Le sud du département est mieux renseigné que la partie septentrionale.
Les premières observations pétrographiques liées à l’étude archéologique des sites funéraires rendent compte d’un approvisionnement local (entre 20 km et 40 km) voire ultra-local (moins de  5 km). Les sarcophages sont ainsi presque tous façonnés dans des roches issues des formations Jurassiques du département. Peu voire pas d’importations lointaines ont été mises en évidence.
La confrontation des données typologique et pétrographique indique une circulation des modèles morphologique et décoratif ; plusieurs carrières peuvent produire un même type de cuves, de couvercles et plus particulièrement de décors. Au sein d’un même site funéraire on peut trouver des sarcophages issus de centres de production différents ; la cuve et le couvercle proviennent presque toujours de la même carrière.
Ces éléments montrent la complexité de l’économie du sarcophage et les différentes échelles auxquelles elle est mise en œuvre. De nombreuses questions restent en suspens concernant l’évolution chronologique de cette économie (émergence et déclin des sites de production) et leur propriété.
Les seules carrières effectivement reconnues restent pour l’instant celles de la vallée de l’Anglin et de la Gartempe, qui feront l’objet d’une campagne de relevé en 2013."

""Narrative Trajectories between Nodal Points in the Cultural Landscape
– The Eriksgata of King Ingjald.

This paper will discuss the fictional narrative of king Ingjald in Heimskringla and Ynglingatal. The story of Ingjald may best be described as a mercurial career in arson. In my interpretation of this text as an archaeologist, I would like to emphasize the narrative structure in relation to archaeological finds and place names rather than get entangled in the spurious historicity of the protagonists. The episode of Ingjald is there as a narrative concept in the shape of a life’s journey. When analyzing this, it becomes apparent that it is not the traditional cyclical itinerary where a kleptocratic ruler travels between his farms that is under the loupe. By contrast, the narrative is linear with three consecutive arsons serving as nodal foci. This trajectory can be applied to the cultural landscape of the Mälar Valley. In this paper, it will be argued that the trajectory of the story essentially follows the Eriksgata from Uppsala to Rönö in time and space (Fischer 2005:188-90). Although the Eriksgata is first mentioned only in the law code of Uppland, Upplandslagen of 1296, new research on the Migration Period and Vendel Period burials and gold hoards, as well as Viking Period runestones, will highlight the importance of certain relevant central places and place names along this route that are also mentioned in the written sources (Arrhenius 2004, Fischer and Victor 2008). The first journey of the Eriksgata has traditionally been described as departing from Uppsala across Lake Mälaren into Södermanland. In its second leg in the inland hundred of Daga, it was said to pass between Norrtuna and Södertuna in Vårdinge parish before turning southwest by Björnlunda via the Sö 2 Axala inscription on a rock wall along the route. Then the Eriksgata arrived in Aspa, with four runestones along the route, past the Aspa hög, a possible legal mound. The exact itinerary of the next step is more uncertain. The story unfolds as follows:

The other children at play pick upon Prince Ingjald. At the insistence of his foster father Svipdag the blind, young Ingjald eats a wolf’s heart as a child (Ynglingasaga 34).

Ingjald’s father Anund dies. (Ynglingasaga 35).

Ingjald vows to enlarge his inherited kingdom in front a group of invited neighboring potentates. These petty kings are then subject to arson in Uppsal (Ynglingasaga 36).

A rival king, Hiorvard Ylving arrives in Myrkvafior∂r (Ynglingasaga 37). This ought to be Mörköfjärden.

War in Svithio∂ (Ynglingasaga 38). This name first appears on Sö Fv1948;289, the third node discussed below.

Granmar is arsoned Sili (Ynglingasaga 39). This ought to be in the area of Kolsundet on Selaön, but as Wessén notes (1952:43): ”Första vokalens kvantitet ses ej av hs”. This is the site of Tuna in Ytterselö parish on Selaön in Södermanland. Here, I shall focus on the cremation burial ground of Tunaby Mellangård (SHM 9435), excavated at the turn of the 20th century by the Swedish archaeologist Bernhard Salin and his Finnish collegue Alfred Hackman. Grave 24, with an the unusual find of a barbaric imitation of a solidus struck for emperor Theodosius II sometime after 441 AD has remained somewhat of a riddle (e.g. Åberg 1953). I have since been able to show that the imitation is die-identical with a 1991 find from the solidus hoard of Botes, Etelhem parish, Gotland (Fischer 2008). With 84 solidi from the period 402-533, the Botes hoard is the largest solidus hoard in Scandinavia (Fagerlie 1967, hoard 137b).

[Bild: SHM 9435]. The solidus imitation from Tunaby Mellangård. After Janse 1922.

Ingjald and his daughter Åsa are arsoned in Ræningi (Ynglingsaga 40). The third important central place is to be found in Aspa and Ludgo parishes in Rönö, Södermanland. Here, the Daga hundred legal assemblies and execution grounds and runic inscriptions line the Eriksgata before the journey stretches across Rönö south via Jönåker and Kolmården to Svintuna in Östergötland. Wessén (1952:44) shows that this place name is sometimes spelled differently: ræningi, reiningi. Cf. Codex Frisianus (attributed by Wessén to an Icelandic scribe, 1325): rauningi. Cf. Sö Fv1948;289 ostrith : lit : -ira : ku(m)... ...usi ÷ at : anunt ÷ auk : raknualt : sun : sin ÷: urthu : ta...R : - (t)an...-...(k)u : ua-u : rikiR : o rauniki : ak : snialastiR : i : suithiuthu. Jansson (1987:105) argues for Codex Frisianus as the correct source and argues that its location is identical to Aspa, Ludgo parish.

Åberg, N., 1953. Den historiska relationen mellan folkvandringstid och vendeltid. KVHAA. Stockholm.

Arrhenius, B., 2004. “Det forntida Sveariket: en myt eller en arkeologisk realitet?” KVHAA Årsbok, pp. 203–227. Stockholm.

Fagerlie, J.M., 1967. Late Roman and Byzantine Solidi Found in Sweden and Denmark.
American Numismatic Society 157. New York.

Fischer, S., 2004. “Kulturell mångfald i Södermanland under folkvandrings- och vendeltid?”
Agneta Åkerlund, ed. Kulturell mångfald i Södermanland, del 2. Länsstyrelsen i Södermanland, rapport. Nyköping.

Fischer, S., 2005. Roman Imperialism and Runic Literacy – The Westernization of Northern Europe (150-800 AD). Aun 33. Uppsala.

Fischer, S., 2008. ”Brief Events and Long-Term Change – The Slow Impact of Foreign Influences in Valsgärde”. S. Norr, ed. Valsgärde Studies. the Place and its People, Past and Present. OPIA 43. Uppsala.

Fischer, S. and Victor, H., 2008: ”De gnistrande kammargravarna i Lilla Sylta.” M. Olausson, (ed.). Hem till Jarlabanke. Jord, makt och evigt liv i östra Mälardalen under järnålder och medeltid. Stockholm.

Jansson, S. B. F. 1987. The Runes of Sweden. Uppsala.

Janse, O., 1922. Le travail de l’or en Suède à l’époque mérovingienne. Etudes précédées d’un mémoire sur les solidi romains et byzantins trouvés en Suède. Orléans.

Wessén, E., ed. 1952. Ynglingsaga. Stockholm.""

Recent national press coverage has generated considerable attention to the solar geometry of the Spanish colonial missions of California. Speculations as to the purpose of the attendant illuminations have ranged widely from outright attacks to praise of recent scholarship that has sought to understand said phenomena within the context of Franciscan mission belief and history. Current research to identify potential parallel illumination sites in the Spanish colonial churches of the Philippines has revealed a pattern of congruent Counter-Reformation architectural design standards and edicts that served to mandate equinoctial church alignments. Those edicts penned by Saint Charles of Borromeo provide conclusive documentation for the church mandated integration of solar geometry, and equinoctial illuminations, into the building of New World church and California mission architecture. I thereby contend that these new revelations support the role of the Catholic Church, and in particular the Council of Trent in the mandated solar geometry so noted, and this in turn serves to verify and bolster those findings from previous research arguing for the liturgical basis of the phenomenon in question.

„Wo die toten Menschen schweigen, da sprechen desto lauter die lebendigen Steine“ – mit diesem Zitat von Heinrich Heine lud die Dienststelle Ingolstadt des Bayerischen Landesamts für Denkmalpflege zum Tag des Offenen Denkmals 2011. Der Schwerpunkt lag auf dem Thema des Tages: „Romantik, Realismus, Revolution – das 19. Jahrhundert“. In aufwändig gestalteten Tafeln wurden bedeutsame Stationen der Archäologie des 19. Jahrhunderts aus der Region präsentiert, die an dieser Stelle nochmals nachzulesen sind.

""In recent years research in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic worldwide has been breaking boundaries, such as pushing back the earliest dates for the human occupation of Britain, the identification of a new species of hominin, cracking the Neanderthal genome and the discovery of the UK’s earliest Mesolithic house. This volume, which is the culmination of a highly successful two-day conference, aims to celebrate this trend with papers from both postgraduates and established academics, presenting new research from a variety of geographical and methodological perspectives.

The Where the Wild Things Are conference, which was held at Durham University on 24-25 March 2012, attracted some 128 delegates from some eighteen countries and allowed a wide range of researchers within the fields of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology to present over fifty papers that demonstrated the breadth of new and innovative advances in the analysis and understanding of these periods. The mixture of contributors from a diverse range of backgrounds allowed for a greater degree of interdisciplinary discourse that is not often seen at similar conferences, where the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic are generally split apart.

The papers that have been proposed for this volume bring the ideas and interpretations set forth at the Wild Things conference to the wider archaeological audience. Collecting contributions from archaeologists conducting research within the British Isles, France, Portugal, Denmark, Russia, the Levant and Europe as a whole, this volume aims to present a cross-section of the exciting range of research currently being conducted to improve our understanding of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic. By combining papers that discuss these two periods together, it is hoped that further dialogue between practitioners of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic research can be encouraged. ""

"Obelisken gehören zu den ältesten Medien der Menschheit. In einer Mittelstellung zwischen Skulptur und Architektur sorgt der Obelisk als Symbol höchster Machtfülle über Jahrtausende hinweg für eine Verbindung zwischen himmlisch-göttlicher und irdisch-herrscherlicher Macht. Daneben erzeugt auch die in ihm verkörperte Perfektion höchster Leistungskraft eine enorme mediale Bedeutung, so dass nicht nur der Obelisk und seine symbolische Ausgestaltung, sondern bereits seine Erschaffung und insbesondere seine Aufstellung zu einem medialen Ereignis wurden...."

"Este catastro tiene por finalidad entregar in-formación sobre seis sitios arqueológicos de gran en-vergadura y relevancia que se ubican al interior de lacomunidad. Junto a la importante aldea de Caserones, su cementerio (Tarapacá 40) y geoglifos (Cas 8), carac-terizamos la aldea de Pircas y los poblados prehispánicosque precedieron al pueblo colonial de Huarasiña, conoci-dos como Tarapacá 13, 13A y 16.
Estos lugares son testimonio de una larga histo-ria ocupacional que se inicia hace miles de años y cuyosherederos hoy en día están intentando movilizar en postde su valoración y protección, entendiendo que las al-deas, cementerios y geoglifos de su comunidad tienenun incalculable valor cultural que da sustento a su arraigo como comunidad al territorio."

This course examines what happens when art crosses borders between cultures. We will look at the historical development of motivations for taking the art of different cultures, from war-time revenge to aesthetic appreciation to scholarly acquisitions. Using case studies, we will determine the effect of these takings on the source culture, and consider the wide range of ethical dilemmas faced by those who have taken art, including preservation, presentation, and interpretation. The last part of the class is dedicated to the examination of current concerns in the field of cultural property: the effects of the modern marketplace for art without provenance and the protection of the art of indigenous cultural property.