From settlement to way of life : a socio-economic analysis of Rogaland's Early Bronze Age settlements

Abstract

In this thesis, Rogaland s Early Bronze Age settlements are used to help discern the way in which the inhabitants lived.

Before the introduction of soil stripping, most of the known and investigated Early Bronze Age settlements in Rogaland were caves and open sites. Today, five different types of settlements sites are known to have existed in Early Bronze Age Rogaland. These settlements can be characterised by their inhabitant s use of different types of dwellings, involving caves, open solutions, two and three-aisled longhouses and u-shaped houses.

When open sites, caves and rock shelters were the only Early Bronze Age settlements uncovered in Rogaland, they were not often drawn upon to contribute to the social interpretation of the region. A reason for this was that they did not conform well to the social traits attributed to Rogaland. In recent decades both the way settlements get to contribute, and the social interpretation of Rogaland s Early Bronze Age have somewhat altered. It is however, still a little uncommon for unusual for studies, investigations or analysis to feature all of Rogaland s many and varied Early Bronze Age settlements. As a result, some questions remain relatively unanswered such as;

Why were so many different types of settlements used at the same time?

What do they tell us about the people who made and inhabited them?

In my thesis I provide a reasonable hypothesis for both questions, by using a comparative analysis and a distributional analysis. I discern some of the socio-economic pattern among the settlements, and relate the pattern and the settlements distribution to various subsistence modes and techniques.