Boundaries: Where Iron Age Archaeology Meets Medieval Art History

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

While interdisciplinarity in archaeology increasingly has blurred the borders between humanities and sciences, an additional boundary in archaeology exists between what is considered Iron Age and what is medieval. The terms have been defined largely from the Continental point of view. In the North, the Viking Age, ca. 800–1050 CE, is considered the last subdivision of the Scandinavian Iron Age and is marked as the period of transition from a non-Christian to a Christian world view. This conversion, which occurred earlier in the South, is studied by scholars from many disciplines including archaeology, history, visual arts, and religion, with diverse research traditions based on disciplinary and national boundaries. In this presentation, I will discuss the vagaries of studying the material culture of Viking Age Scandinavia both as an Iron Age archaeologist and as a medievalist art historian.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Work in Medieval Archaeology, Part 2: Crossing Boundaries, Materialities, and Identities   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37850.0