Traversing the Great Forest: Work and Mobility in Sweden’s Premodern Farmscape

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Most of pre-modem Sweden comprised wooded uplands lying outside more densely populated 'civilized' regions. Often collectively called The Great Forest, this territory stretched from south-central to the high north, where Scandinavian, Finnish, and Sami people often lived in close proximity. Agriculture, herding, and forest production in such different physical and social environments produced different paths and projects, whose varied spatial patterns, combined with historic records, shed light on the lived experience of women, men, and children in an otherwise under-documented time and place, illuminating socioeconomic conditions rooted in older traditions yet important in the future trajectory of the greater polity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24767