Författare: RUNDKVIST, Martin
ISBN: 978-91-7402-405-0
ISSN: 0083-6761
Antal sidor: 165
Utgivningsår: 2011
Serie: HANDLINGAR Antikvariska serien 49

Beställningsinformation: eddy.se (även för fri nedladdning i pdf-format)

The Swedish province of Östergötland is one of Scandinavia’s breadbaskets, with an archaeological and historical record that speaks of great wealth through the ages. The province has long been recognised as one of the 1st millennium’s political hot spots. Splendid single finds, though never before surveyed comprehensively, offer a rough idea of where elite settlements might be sought. But little has been known about individual elite settlements in 1st millennium Östergötland.

Not one of the Beowulfian mead-halls of this book’s title, the ostentatious manorial buildings where the Late Iron Age elite lived their lives and played their roles, has been identified in the field. Yet they are easily recognised elsewhere through their architecture and associated find categories.

This book aims at beginning to remedy Östergötland’s regional absence of mead-halls, being an investigation of the province’s internal political geography during the period AD 375–1000. Where were the elite settlements? When was each of them an abode of the era’s elite? What sort of regional power pattern do they form?

Martin Rundkvist is an archaeologist who received his doctorate from Stockholm University in 2003. He is mainly active in research into the Bronze and Iron Ages in Scandinavia. Furthermore he edits the journal Fornvännen.