Assembly sites: arenas of interplay between the elite and wider community in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Summary

This paper investigates the interrelationship between the elite and the wider community at Scandinavian assembly (thing) sites in the late Iron Age. Monuments suggest that these sites were designed by the elite for the performance of elite rituals, such as legitimising power and kingship. At the assembly, laws involving ethnic identity and group belonging were publicised and enforced and the sites themselves must therefore have had a role to play in the creation and upholding of collective identities. Community activities and rituals, which most likely and created collective memories and strengthened social cohesion, were enacted. Many of these activities may have been designed by the elite, but equally the idea of assemblies as communal spaces may have been collectively driven. Assemblies therefore formed arenas of interplay between the top-elite and the wider population; kings were elected and ruled through the assembly, while at the same time continuously dependent on the endorsement of the people. This enduring concern for thing sites and associations is also richly evident, attesting to the potent role of meeting-places as curators of local identity over the longue durée.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Power from Below: Collectivity and Heterarchy in Global Perspective

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16847