State formation in the Circumpolar North since the 15th century
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2014
Question of state formation has been relatively unexplored in historical archaeology. Furthermore, circumpolar areas are often seen as peripheral to the formation of states, the centers of which lie in the densely populated southern areas. Well known studies of the 19th’century nationalism and contemporary state formation, such as Imagined Communities, has been globally recognized. However, the state formation has older roots even in the circumpolar areas, and the multi-ethnic and dynamic circumpolar areas have played important roles in this process. In Northern Fennoscandia and the North Atlantic diverse patterns of the material culture, like architecture, monetary system, illustrations etc., emerge since late medieval period. The purpose of this session is to discuss what the material roots of state formation are, and, how the state formation can be studied through the material culture? We would like to encourage scholars to discuss the topic from different point of views, like urban, religious, social, colonial, and ethno archaeological perspectives.
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- Documents (7)
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Clay pipes in Swedish politics and economy, 1650-1850 (2014)
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The use of clay tobacco pipes spread through the northern European populations during the first two decades of the seventeenth century and the joy of smoking did encounter hardly any social, economical or ethnical barriers on its way. Swedish population was introduced to smoking of tobacco already during the 1590 and by 1620s even the northernmost settlements were littered with pipe fragments. The 17th century tobacco pipes in Sweden were all imported, but since the early 18th century The Crown...
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Collecting Sápmi - commodification and globalization of Sámi material culture (2014)
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In the 17th century the Swedish state expanded its influence in northern Fennoscandia through mission, tax regulation and force. The state aimed at controlling the natural resources of Sápmi as well as the Sámi population. The vast region of inland northern Sweden and Finland was started to be surveyed and the first scientific expeditions were sent out in order to collect and describe Sápmi and the Sámi. Hundreds of often sacred Sámi objects were collected and brought into new contexts in...
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Don’t put your village where the land grows : Early state presence in Eastern James Bay, Canada and the settlement history of the Wemindji Cree Nation (2014)
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Archaeological evidence suggests that there is a long-term relationship between settlement location and regional scale variability in shoreline stability in isostatically uplifting landscapes such as Eastern James Bay. The arrival of the Hudson’s Bay Company in James Bay resulted in the establishment of a number of trading and settlement centers that have very different topographical profiles than documented prehistoric settlements in the region. During the 19th and early 20th century, a Cree...
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Icelandic migration and nationality in the late 19th century (2014)
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In the decade after Lord Acton (1862) wrote that ‘exile is the nursery of nationality’ Iceland experienced its largest exodus. In the last two decades of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th it is estimated that one in five Icelanders emigrated to North America, at the same time as the country’s independence battle from its Danish colonizers was gaining momentum. In this paper I will explore the connections between the emigration movement and Icelandic nationalism and state formation...
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Production of urban space and state formation in Oulu, Northern Finland, during the late medieval and early modern period (2014)
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This paper discusses urban space in the northern Swedish town of Oulu during the 17th and 18th centuries and its role in Sweden’s state formation. Oulu, a former medieval trading place, was founded in 1605. Oulu was one of the first towns Sweden founded in the northern coastal area of the Gulf of Bothnia after a new border line was drawn between Sweden and Russia in 1595. Oulu’s landscape was at first formed in a medieval style along a main street, but in the middle of the 17th century the town...
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Reformation and the State in Iceland (2014)
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This paper explores the connection of church and state in Iceland during the post-Reformation period, drawing on the recent archaeological excavations of an episcopal manor and seminary in the southwest of Iceland.
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Urban Archaeology and Historical Archaeology in the cities, a controversy still present in Latin America (2014)
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Historical archeology emerged during the 80& 180;s on the cities, not on the field. It was a path opposite to the U.S. that began excavating historic sites. The difference between those who wanted to do urban archeology and not archaeology of historic sites, that means to dig “sites” in the old sense of the uniqueness of place, was urban archeology conceived as diggings in places separated in time (of excavation) of a single surface of ground covered by the city at different times.Traditional...