Slave Ships of the Viking Age

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.

Viking ships were slave ships. Between 750 and 1100 CE, clinker-built vessels were used across Northern Europe on raids for collecting captives and transporting them on routes that linked the North Atlantic to Central Asia. We have extensive knowledge about these ships through a unique combination of textual evidence, material remains, and experimental archaeology. Yet this evidence has not been interrogated as a trace of slaving activity. This paper investigates these intersections of slaving and sailing through the material culture of the Viking Age, proposing new models for understanding early medieval slavery and developing frameworks that allow a reappraisal of more recent slave ships as well.

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): 39018.0