Norwegian Archaeological Review 

About: Norwegian Archaeological Review is an academic journal published by Routledge. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Bronze Age & Settlement (litigation). It has an ISSN identifier of 0029-3652. Over the lifetime, 740 publications have been published receiving 8724 citations.

Material culture after text: re‐membering things

Abstract: Why have the social and human sciences shown such disinterest in material culture? How has this neglect affected archaeology? How do things and materiality at large relate to human beings and ‘social life’? These questions are addressed in this article which also critically examines social constructivist and phenomenological approaches to material culture Arguing against the maxim that ‘all that is solid melts into air’, it is claimed that to understand important aspects of past and present societies, we have to relearn to ascribe action, goals and power to many more ‘agents’ than the human actor — in other words, to re‐member things

Things Are Us! A Commentary on Human/Things Relations under the Banner of a ‘Social’ Archaeology

Abstract: What work does the adjective ‘social’ in social archaeology do? What is the character of human/things relations under the rubric of social archaeology? We raise these questions in relation to the recent Companion to Social Archaeology by Meskell and Preucel. While the corrective of the ‘social’ has been extremely productive, in broaching these questions we enter very murky waters. Our task in this article is to show where meanings of the ‘social’ have broken down; our charge is to demonstrate how frames of reference in understanding people/things relations have become muddled. By building on the strength of archaeology with regard to things, we seek to revisit the question: what is it to be human?

Transition to farming in Northern Europe: A hunter‐gatherer perspective

Abstract: The transition to settled farming communities in northern Europe was a far more gradual process than elsewhere in Europe: this makes it possible to study the transition to farming archaeologically at a finer level of resolution. In this paper we trace the shift to cultivation in two areas: Denmark and Finland. Despite the difference in the time scale of agricultural evolution, and despite other chronological and environmental differences, we can, in both cases, isolate three distinct stages in the transition to fanning, thus extending the process well beyond the conventional date for the shift to cultivation. Both the case studies emphasize the long continuation of foraging adaptations, and the long delay before the appearance of a predominantly agricultural economy. This delay has been caused by the development of successful maritime adaptations, which acted as a viable alternative to farming until a specific trigger—a decline in marine resources—occurred and initiated the substitution phase of the trans...

A child is born. The child's world in an archaeological perspective

Abstract: The child's world has been left out of archaeological research. The subject's main contribution is in the field of social history. Special attention is given to cultural transference. A definition of the child's world together with methodological, historical, and ethno‐cultural aspects is presented. A review is given of Scandinavian research history on the subject. Classification and problems in distinguishing children in the material record are discussed. Archaeology's main obstacle is in its restricted knowledge of the ancient adult world. The study of human osteological material and tests on lithic material is looked upon as promising.

The somatization of archaeology: Institutions, discourses, corporeality

Abstract: This paper examines archaeology's somatization. New conceptualizations of sex and gender in philosophy, anthropology and queer theory are discussed. Current formulations of the body within our discipline, such as the fascination with Foucault and power‐based interpretations, are at the expense of human agency and individuality. One way of engaging with the lived body, bypassing essentialism and social constructionism, is to view embodied persons as individuated sites of interface and resolution between the biological, cultural and personal. To illustrate these notions, Egyptian concepts of the body, self and death are explored in a mortuary context at the site of Deir el Medina.