An important element in a central place was the residence of an individual of considerable authority and prestige called a ‘magnate’.18 The magnate was the dominant individual in the central place community whose manor was the largest and most impressive farmstead. Often it included a long timber hall for gatherings and ritual activities. Surrounding the magnate’s estate were dependent farmsteads involved in craft production (especially metals) in addition to agricultural activities, as well as sacrificial and ritual sites, cemeteries and trading places. These activity places were scattered across the surrounding countryside rather than concentrated adjacent to the magnate’s manor. Natural features structured the landscape into smaller units and connected the various elements.
Recognition of the growing overlap between religious activity and secular functions is key to understanding central places. While wetlands, groves, lakes, springs and other natural features continued to have spiritual significance, ceremonial activities also began to take place in and around structures, with the halls playing the role of cult buildings or shrines. Thus aristocratic power began to blend with religious authority rather than being a separate sphere of activity.
The beach market and magnate farm at Gudme
The extent to which Roman goods were pouring into the Barbarian World can be seen at Gudme, located on the eastern coast of the Danish island of Funen (Fyn). It lies along the shore of the Great Belt, a large strait through which maritime traffic from northern Germany passes on its way to the Kattegat. Around Gudme, settlements and cemeteries show the importance of this area between AD 200 and 600.19
Although finds had already been made around Gudme in the nineteenth century, including the Lundeborg gold hoard weighing over 4,200 grams (9 lb), archaeologists did not focus on this area until the 1980s. Metal-detector enthusiasts began turning up hundreds of gold, silver and bronze artefacts.20 Open-minded archaeologists collaborated with them in serious archaeological investigation. Since metal-detectorists are compensated under Danish law for precious metals they discover, a lucrative arrangement was established. The sheer quantity of the finds showed that Gudme was a very special place, so archaeological investigations began in earnest.
The picture of life during the first half of the first millennium AD at Gudme has started to come into focus.21 Gudme itself lies 5 kilometres (3 mi.) inland from Lundeborg on the coast, and the two formed a settlement complex and port between about AD 200 and 400, although it appears that the area was already becoming important during earlier centuries as shown by a cemetery at Møllegårdsmarken between Gudme and Lundeborg. For about 1 kilometre (½ mi.) along the coast near Lundeborg, near the mouth of a small brook that leads inland to Gudme, vast quantities of goods were delivered, many of which came from the Roman World. Some were broken during shipping and discarded, or simply lost. These include terra sigillata pottery and glass beads and rods, along with many Roman silver coins. Iron rivets from boats are also found in abundance, suggesting that boatbuilding and repairs were carried out. The Lundeborg coastal zone also included workshops for iron, silver and gold products as well as amber and bone carving.
One interpretation of Lundeborg is as a beach market, a sort of Iron Age Tesco or Wal-Mart where all sorts of goods were available, brought in from the south and picked up by the boatload to be dispersed to points around southern Scandinavia. Perhaps it had a seasonal or annual character rather than being a continuous operation. Lundeborg may be an early form of the emporia found across northern Europe later in the first millennium AD.
The exact relationship between the commercial activity on the coast and activities at Gudme inland is unclear, but with the help of the metal-detectorists, archaeologists have found a central settlement along with several outlying farmsteads. Of most interest are several long timber structures, characterized as ‘halls’, which are much larger than the typical Iron Age longhouses of northern Europe. The largest, built in the second half of the third century AD and used for a number of decades, measured 47 metres (154 ft) long and 10 metres (33 ft) wide. The roof was supported by eight pairs of massive interior posts, creating three aisles along the length of the structure and a large open space in the middle. Nearby halls were smaller but equally robust in their construction.
Outline of timber hall at Gudme, Denmark, showing massive interior posts and smaller wall posts outlined in white.
Artefacts from the Gudme halls reflect wealth and privilege. Over a hundred Roman silver coins and pieces of gold jewellery were found among or in the postholes. Some of the ornaments originated from southeast Europe, while others were made locally, including a small face-effigy of a man and pieces of a silver neck ring highlighted with gold. Some were in votive deposits buried during the construction of the halls. Finds of gold and silver show where workshops were located in the Gudme complex. Much of this material was imported as cut-up scrap from the Roman World, including pieces of broken statues and dishes.
One of the products of these workshops was a home-grown Scandinavian form called a bracteate: a small disc of very thin embossed gold sheet. A small loop at the top suggests that they may have been worn as pendants or sewn on garments like a medal. Motifs are Nordic in character, either a human figure or face representing a personage or a god, or stylized horses, birds or spears. Metal-detectorists and chance finds in the Gudme area have turned up many more gold and silver deposits, marking it as one of the richest sites in northern Europe during the first centuries AD.
Gudme has been interpreted as the seat of a powerful magnate who could exert control over the surrounding farms and especially the beach market at Lundeborg, which in turn controlled the regional distribution of Roman goods. In many respects, this arrangement seems comparable to the Hallstatt elites of central Europe and their control of the trade with the Greeks several centuries earlier. The question is whether Gudme was also a centre for religious activity, for the name itself means ‘home of the gods’. An important lesson from Gudme and Lundeborg is the sheer quantity of Roman objects – coins, scrap gold and silver, pottery, glass – that were taken north and landed on a Danish beach 500 kilometres (300 mi.) from the Imperial frontier.
Roman gold coin perforated to make a pendant, found at Gudme.
Uppåkra
The road from Malmö in southern Sweden goes up a gentle slope as it nears the edge of the university town of Lund. Open fields surrounding a small village on the top of this rise cover the site of one of the largest settlements in Scandinavia during the first millennium AD. Settlement at Uppåkra began during the first century BC and flourished over the next several centuries, and by AD 400 it probably had about 1,000 inhabitants. At its peak, Uppåkra covered about 400,000 square metres (100 acres). Several centuries of occupation left thick layers of archaeological deposits.22
Investigations at Uppåkra have flourished under another collaboration between amateur metal-detectorists and professional archaeologists. Over 20,000 metal artefacts have been plotted on the site plan to show their distribution. Most were bronze, but a significant number were iron, silver and gold. While many date to later phases of occupation, since they are closer to the surface and easier to detect, earlier ones have been found through excavations, which revealed a thriving community based on agriculture, trade and craft production.
The principal habitation unit at Uppåkra was the farmstead, of which there were around thirty to forty. They contained dwellings, barns, storage buildings and workshops. Craftsmen made high-quality objects from metals, bone and antler, as well as cloth and agricultural tools. Scales and weights indicate commercial activity, so we presume that Uppåkra functioned as a market town. Cattle were the primary livestock species, and barley was the principal crop, but archaeobotanical and archaeozoological evidence reflects a diverse subsistence economy. The soil in southern Sweden is very fertile, so Uppåkra and outlying settlements drew on a very productive agricultural system. Of particular note is the presence of plants prominent in Roman cuisine with a Mediterranea
n origin, such as dill and parsley, during the second century AD.23
One building at Uppåkra stood out.24 It was not exceptionally large, but its construction and archaeological context made it clearly special. The structure measured 13.5 by 6 metres (44 × 20 ft), outlined by foundation trenches that were convex in plan on the longer sides. Gaps in the trenches indicated entrances. Inside, four immense postholes held thick timbers supporting a very high roof. In the centre was a large fireplace. Unravelling the soil layers in the trenches and the interior revealed that it had been built and rebuilt in seven stages, on the same general plan. It was in use for a very long time, having been first constructed around AD 200 and continuing until after AD 800. The location already had spiritual significance due to several earlier burial mounds nearby. Finely made objects like gold foils and exquisite metal and glass vessels, as well as deposits of intentionally destroyed weapons and bones of sacrificed animals and people, were found adjacent to the building. Abundant mouse droppings in the interior suggest that the building was not in everyday use but was only opened for special occasions.
Uppåkra represents another example of central place settlements that arose during the first millennium AD across northern Europe. Such localities were not oppida in the central and western European sense, since they do not have massive defensive structures, but they were nodal points for craft production, trade and ceremonial activity, which probably translated into regional authority and power. The Roman garden plants indicate that Uppåkra was on a network that brought them north. Perhaps its aristocracy demonstrated its status by consuming exotic Roman cuisine. After a long occupation, Uppåkra declined and was abandoned when political and religious authority converged nearby in Lund around AD 1000.
Ritual building at Uppåkra, Sweden, showing four large interior posts, the central hearth and trenches for exterior walls.
War-booty sacrifices
The war-booty sacrifice at Hjortspring described in the previous chapter was merely a warm-up to the widespread practice of offering weapons and associated military equipment in lakes and bogs across Scandinavia during the first centuries AD. Over 300 weapon sacrifices are known from Denmark alone, with more from Sweden and Norway. While it seems clear that these sacrifices were made by the victors using equipment of the vanquished, it is uncertain in most cases whether the victors were attacking or defending. At Hjortspring, the boat suggested that the defeated forces arrived from elsewhere.
Three boats were found in a bog at Nydam in southern Denmark in the nineteenth century, accompanied by an array of weapons and tools.25 Two were made of oak and a third of pine. One of the oak boats was chopped up prior to deposition, while the other was flattened but complete.26 Through tree-ring dating, the complete oak boat has been dated to AD 310–20, and it appears that the deposit was made two or three decades later. Based on the proportions of weapons, it seems that many Nydam warriors carried spears, but a third of them carried swords based on Roman designs. Archers represent a new element in barbarian forces, for several longbows of yew and hazel and many arrow shafts and arrowheads were found.
The oak boat from Nydam was more sophisticated in its construction than any described so far. It was built using a technique called clinker, in which overlapping strakes were fastened with iron rivets and caulked with wool cloth. This method is very much in the great Nordic boatbuilding tradition that reached its highest expression in Viking longboats later in the first millennium AD. The Nydam oak boat was also larger than the one at Hjortspring, measuring 23 metres (75 ft) long and 4 metres (13 ft) across, with fifteen pairs of oars. Two carved posts with stylized human heads, measuring about 1.4 metres (4½ ft) long, are interpreted as mooring posts that hooked over the gunwale.
About a century before the Nydam Boat and its associated weapons were sacrificed, an immense war-booty offering was made in Jutland in the valley of the river Å at Illerup.27 Illerup Ådal A is the largest of several offerings here, dating to the beginning of the third century, about AD 210. It dwarfs other weapon deposits, containing 350 shields, 366 lances and 410 spears, over 100 swords, eleven sets of riding gear and many other items. There seems to have been no boat or archery equipment, however. The weapons were systematically destroyed before being thrown into what was then a lake, either from boats or from the shore.
The restored Nydam Boat illustrating the ‘clinker’ construction technique, on display at the Archäologisches Landesmuseum, Gottorf Castle, Schleswig, Germany.
Reconstruction in the National Museum, Copenhagen, of the Nydam war-booty offering.
Of particular interest in the Illerup Ådal A deposit are bones of four horses with ritually inflicted injuries rather than everyday butchery marks.28 Their deaths were caused by multiple concurrent blows from different types of weapons, suggesting that several people attacked them simultaneously. The horses are presumed to have belonged to the defeated army. Strontium isotope ratios show that they came from southern Scandinavia, indicating that the battle was a fairly local conflict rather than a trans-regional war.
Nonetheless, the combatants at Illerup Ådal A had distant connections, however indirect, with the Roman world at AD 200. Two hundred Roman silver coins, the most recent being from AD 187/8, were found in circumstances suggesting that they were carried in small pouches. Many of the swords at Illerup Ådal A were two-sided, pattern-welded models, made only in Roman workshops, although the hilts could have been added locally. Presumably these had been available to elite warriors.
The Illerup Ådal A weapons find and the Nydam Boat, separated by just over a century, show several important developments. First, advances in boatbuilding technology in the Nydam oak boat reflect a dramatic improvement from that seen at Hjortspring and before. Second, the Illerup Ådal A deposit reflects a fighting force estimated to be about 400, five times larger than the 80 extrapolated from the Hjortspring deposit, while the Nydam finds indicate the incorporation of archers into the military unit. Ritual killing of horses at Illerup provides an equine parallel to the gruesome methods of dispatching the bog bodies. Finally, the Roman coins and swords at Illerup Ådal A show the penetration not just of isolated items but mass quantities of the products of Roman workshops and mints far into the Barbarian World, a good 650 kilometres (400 mi.) beyond the Imperial frontier.
People start moving
The middle of the first millennium AD is commonly seen as a time of great movement in the Barbarian World, which reached its apex from the fourth to seventh centuries. Barbarian peoples known from history, such as Goths and Vandals, roamed across the landscape in coherent groups, eventually penetrated the Roman frontiers, and wreaked havoc. They are conceptualized as roaring freight trains, with a locomotive of fierce warriors followed by wagons full of women, children and elderly who relocated en masse from their ancestral homes. Arrows on maps show their presumed routes across temperate and Mediterranean Europe. When they encountered Romans, things generally did not end well for the latter, enervated by the stresses of keeping control of a fracturing empire and unable to resist.
This image of the late Roman Empire resisting great barbarian migrations and eventually being overwhelmed has been a fixture in traditional scholarship and historical narrative since the sixteenth century.29 Germanic invasions and conquests doomed the Roman Empire, and now form key elements in the origin stories of several modern European states. More recently, some scholars have begun to contest this view, leading still others to push back. Thus, historical studies of this period are awash in polemic and disagreement.
The main problem is that coherent mass movements of peoples between about AD 300 and 500 in the Barbarian World are virtually invisible in the archaeological record. We would expect to see distinctive artefact types and destroyed settlements marking horizons where violent barbarian bands passed through. Recall the penchant for war-booty sacrifices in the Barbarian World. Would not one expect marauding war bands from beyond the Roman frontier to continue this practice as they fought their way a
cross Gaul and into the Mediterranean World? These are virtually unknown.
As a prehistoric archaeologist, I find this striking, since we do have opportunities to observe large-scale population movements in the archaeological record. The settlement of central Europe by farming populations during the sixth millennium BC is an example of migration and colonization in which communities practising agriculture have very different settlements, houses, artefacts and mortuary practices from the indigenous hunter-gatherer populations. We simply do not see similar discontinuities triggered by hypothesized mass population movements from the Barbarian World into the disintegrating Roman Empire during the first millennium AD.
The historian Peter Heather points out that people migrate for two basic reasons, both now and in the past: in search of opportunities that will give them and their families a better life, or because they were forced to move under threat of violence.30 Guy Halsall has noted some general characteristics of migrations: population movement is rarely one-way; migrants follow established routes rather than flooding over the length of a border; migrants are drawn to pre-existing immigrant communities; and, most importantly, the flow of information is crucial to migration.31 I would add that numbers of immigrants usually appear larger to the society being asked to absorb them than their absolute headcount. Many more people stay behind than migrate.
Movement of people throughout the Barbarian World was nothing new. It represented a continuation of interconnectedness and personal mobility reaching back to the Stone Age. The Amesbury Archer was well travelled, as was Egtved Girl. Ötzi was making a high-altitude crossing of the Alps. The difference now was movements of individuals and small groups were recorded by literate peoples with whom they had contact, who then aggregated these movements into narratives that described incursions of ‘tribes’ with collective identities. These narratives then shaped the views of their readership, as well as those of scholars in distant centuries who privilege written accounts over the archaeological record. Historians several centuries hence may presume that western Europe was overrun by bands of Polish plumbers in the early twenty-first century unless they understand the domestic political context in which this expression was used in France and Britain.
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