Graduate School Human Development in Landscapes

John Evelyn's Sylva, a classic of forestry from 1664, is frequently identified as having greatly stimulated tree planting in England. Sylva is furthermore often said to have been a reply to a paper by the navy requesting the Royal Society's advice on securing the nation's naval timber supply. This paper critically examines these claims. It argues that the manual-like Sylva could not have been and indeed was not the reply to the navy's pragmatic request, another more brief and pragmatic paper was. Also, there is no evidence that Sylva stimulated planting in one of the important royal forests, the Forest of Dean. The problem of the availability of naval timber had in any case already been in the agenda most of the 17th century and did not need Evelyn as its publicist. Sylva was, however, a best-seller among the English country gentlemen for reasons having to do with gardening and tree planting as an aesthetic exercise and an expressions of social status.

With the emergence of modern techniques of environmental analysis and widespread availability of accessible tools and quantitative data, the question of environmental determinism is once again on the agenda. This paper is theoretical in character, attempting, for the benefit of drawing up research designs, to understand and evaluate the character of environmental determinism. We reach three main conclusions: (1) in a typical pattern of research design, studies seek to detect simultaneous shifts in the environmental and archaeological records, variously positing the former to have influenced, triggered or caused the latter; (2) the question of determinism involves uncertainty about the justification for the above research design in particular in what comes to biologism and the concept of environmental thresholds on the one hand and the externality of the drivers of transformation in human groups and societies on the other; (3) adapting the concepts of the social production of vulnera...

The past few decades have witnessed a growing realisation that marketbased measures of human well-being-measures that centre on income and consumption distributions-miss some other perhaps even more essential elements of human well-being. This insight has found a prominent expression in the work of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen's so-called capability approach. At the same time, the market-based measure of inequality as a function of the distribution of material remains in graves and other locations remain dominant in archaeology. In this paper, we explore the significance of the capability approach, and the associated concept of human well-being based on the idea of capabilities, to the archaeology of social

Drawing on Alfred Schütz’s thought, as well as on a number of modern pragmatists and practice theorists, we theorize incomegetting—referring to practices of getting income, typically salaried work—as the paramount structurer of everyday life and, therefore, also the chief mediator of the human–nature metabolism. Even though the pragmatics of everyday life as an aggregate underlie the bulk of environmental impacts, these insidious impacts impose little immediate influence on everyday life, in particular in the urban Global North. In other words, the pragmatic dimension of everyday activities—principally, work—that takes place within a vastly complex and globally interlinked productive world system, has most often no immediate connection to the “natural” environment. While parts of the populations are directly dependent in terms of livelihoods on the “natural” environment, these populations are typically pushed to the margins of the global productive system. The understanding formulat...

Prominent voices in archeology have expressed deep skepticism about the role of theory in archeology, while with new, exciting methods at its disposal, archeological science is occasionally perceived as not needing theory at all. This article reflects upon the debate about theory in archeology to arrive at a robust but critical middle-range concept of the role and character of theory in socio-environmental archeology. It is argued that archeology is a data-based science and, consequently, in order for theory to be meaningful in socio-environmental archeology, theory ought explicitly aim to make its qualitative concepts quantitative to establish a clear relation to data and its interpretation. On the turn side, theory plays an important role critically reflecting upon the use of concepts in archeological understanding and explanation, as well as their origins in particular paradigms, as examples of which certain debates in scientific archeology are discussed (aDNA and migration, evol...

Om analyser af tragtbaegerkeramik I mange af forhistoriens perioder udgør keramik en grundsten i kronologien. Dette skyldes den store mulighed for variation af form og ornamentering samt ikke mindst den store forekomst i naesten alle kontekster. Således også for tragtbaegerkulturen, hvor den mest anvendte kronologi er baseret på keramikken og ikke f.eks. økserne eller andre flintgenstande. Men de ting, der gør den velegnet til kronologi, gør den samtidig vanskelig at arbejde med. Den store variation gør det svaert at overskue, hvilke der har betydning, og den store maengde gør det langsommeligt at arbejde med. Dertil kommer, at keramikken kan variere efter kontekst. Det er måske af disse grunde, at maengden af analyser af tragtbaegerkeramik har vaeret begraenset de seneste mange år. Det kunne selvfølgelig også skyldes, at alt var analyseret tilfredsstillende, at man havde styr på alle perioderne, og at der ikke var flere muligheder i materialet. Dette er ikke tilfaeldet. Den seneste store bølge af keramikanalyser i 1970'erne og 1980'erne gav mere forvirring end klarhed. Ikke nok med at lokale og regionale stile blev erkendt, der opstod også en diskussion af, på hvilket grundlag og med hvilke metoder man skulle lave analyserne. Vi står tilbage med en grundlaeggende uenighed om kronologisystemet i tidligneolitikum, flere regioner hvor den stilmaessige tilknytning er meget dårligt eller slet ikke belyst, en troldebjergstil som måske, måske ikke udgør en selvstaendig fase, og en uenighed om hvilke grundlaeggende praemisser vi skal analysere keramikken ud fra. En anden grund til de manglende keramikanalyser kunne vaere manglen på nyt materiale eller muligheden for ny viden. Dette er heller ikke tilfaeldet. Der er gjort mange nye fund, der kunne udvide vores forståelse, ligesom mange aeldre fund ikke er bearbejdet. Et endnu vigtigere argument for nye analyser af keramikken er den teoretiske udvikling. For selvom kronologien er bygget op om keramik, er det ikke ensbetydende med, at keramikken ikke kan bruges í besvarelsen af andre problemstillinger, eksempelvis transregionale relationers påvirkning af lokalsamfundets dynamik eller ritualers funktion i lokalsamfundets struktur. Selvom disse adskiller sig meget i deres sigte fra kronologidiskussionen, er det det samme problem, der gør sig gaeldende, hvis man vil bruge keramikken analytisk: Hvordan sikrer man sig, at de analyser, man laver, giver svar på det, man gerne vil vide. Det lyder måske banalt, men det er essentielt for styrken af ens konklusioner og en af de store svagheder ved mange analyser. Det er her, tragtbaegerkeramikkens store variation kommer ind. Da variationerne som udgangspunkt kan have relation til alt, kan det vaere meget uoverskueligt at give sig i kast med. Derfor denne artikel. Jeg påstår hverken, at det er nemt, eller at jeg her kommer med en udtømmende analyse af problemet. Men jeg håber, det kan vaere til inspiration for fornyet fokus på keramikanalysers muligheder. Artiklen har et metodisk sigte, derfor vil teori spille en underordnet rolle, selvom det er vigtigt for tolkningen af keramikken, hvilken teoretisk tilgang man kommer med. Jeg vil både gennemgå diskussionen historisk og komme med case-eksempler på, hvordan man kan (og ikke kan) bruge forskellige data og metoder. Artiklen er delt op i to dele, da der er to hovedtrin i en statistisk analyse af keramik. Første trin er udvaelgelse, beskrivelse og organisering af analyseenheder. Andet trin er statistisk behandling af analyseenhederne. Man kunne tilføje et tredje og afgørende trin: fortolkning. Dette trin er afhaengigt dels af de muligheder og begraensninger, de første to trin giver, og dels af den teoretiske ramme og de mål, analysen har. De to trin er indbyrdes afhaengige. De statistiske metoder, man bruger, stiller bestemte krav til udvaelgelsen af det materiale, man bruger, og til den beskrivelse og organisering, man foretager (Shennan 1997: 5). Samtidig beror valget af statistiske metoder på det materiale, der er til rådighed, og må tilpasses efter dette. Derfor er arbejdsprocessen frem mod de valg, der foretages, vekslende mellem overvejelser om de statistiske metoders anvendelighed, og hvordan registreringen af elementer foregår. Når det i det følgende er beskrevet hver for sig, er det af organisatoriske hensyn snarere end udtryk for arbejdsprocessens forløb eller retning. Den metode, man bruger til at udvaelge pladser og fund, der skal indgå i analysen, har stor betydning for resultatet. Forskellige typer af materiale giver forskellige fordele og ulemper i forhold til styrken af analyserne, og i forhold til hvad man kan tolke ud fra dem. Mosefundne lerkar er ofte hele, hvorfor de giver bedre mulighed for at analysere karformer end systemgravsanlaeg eller bopladser, hvor materialet er fragmenteret. Disse giver derimod et bredere indblik i karforrådet. Der har vaeret en del diskussion af hvilke typer fundenheder, der egner sig bedst til f.eks. kronologi. Selve beskrivelsen og organiseringen af materialet er vigtigt at få diskuteret, da man her foretager en raekke valg, der potentielt kan få stor betydning for resultatet. Disse valg er grundlaeggende en del af analysemetoden. For at sikre at andre kan vurdere resultatets trovaerdighed, er det vigtigt at fremlaegge valg og fravalg samt at diskutere og vurdere materialets begraensninger. Diskussion: Bopladsfund, megalitter, hele kar eller sluttede fund? De første kronologisystemer og stile blev udledt på baggrund af megalitter , Forsander 1936), men i 1944 argumenterer Therkel Mathiassen for, at keramikken i megalitbegravelser ikke bør anvendes som udgangspunkt for kronologien. Han fremhaever to argumenter: 1. Gravgods er ikke repraesentativt for kulturen som helhed, da kun bestemte typer kommer med. 2. Flere begravelser i samme kammer gør det umuligt at henføre enkelte lerkar til samme periode. I stedet benytter han sig af store bopladsfund, da de i højere grad giver et samlet billede af en kulturs redskabsformer. Samtidig mener han, at de kun har vaeret beboet i relativt kort tid ad gangen og derefter forladt (Mathiassen 1944: 88-89). Becker viser imidlertid, at bopladserne ikke nødvendigvis repraesenterer en kort fase, og det samlede bopladsmateriale derfor ikke er egnet som kronologisk udgangspunkt. Derfor bør man i stedet bruge enkelte lukkede gruber eller forseglede lag 1958: 6-9, 18-19). Ebbesen afviser også, at bopladser kan bruges, men bruger i stedet det enkelte lerkar som et sluttet fund til sin kronologi (1975: 11-15; 1979: 80). En fordel, denne metode giver, er, at man har helt styr på karformen og ornamenteringszonen, hvilket giver mulighed for en meget systematisk behandling af materialet. Dette udnytter Ebbesen dog ikke (Nielsen 1982;. Fordelen kan illustreres ved et eksempel: Gebauer 1979 benytter en meget systematisk tilgang, hvor der opdeles i karformer, ornamentzoner og ornamenter. Derefter foretager hun individuelle seriationer for de forskellige karformer med

This article will discuss the ceramic styles of the early Middle Neolithic Djursland. It argues for a new local style in the area, called the Blakbjerg-Brokhøj style, named after two causewayed enclosures that form the basis of this article. This style draws inspiration from the Virum style, which is characterized by massive decorations of whipped cord, but also includes many new MN I elements such as vertical bands and zipper patterns. It is further argued that this style co-existed with a more general MN Ia style and that these two stylistic appearances supplemented each other in the social network of the Funnel Beaker culture (FBC). An interpretation of this double stylistic appearance will be presented.

This paper reviews the chronology and regional subgroups of the North group of the Funnel Beaker Culture (TRB) in the fi rst half of the 4th millennium. The study area covers Northern Germany and Southern Scandinavia, as well as parts of middle Scandinavia. 4000 BC is defined as the start of the Neolithic, though hunting and
gathering continued to contribute to the subsistence economy. For this period several regional subgroups have been defi ned (Becker 1947; Ebbesen/Mahler 1979; Madsen/Petersen 1982–83; Madsen 1994), and these have been seen as discrete cultural complexes. I will examine the premises behind these groups and discuss what
they represent in order to gain an improved understanding of the dynamics within the Early Neolithic I phase.

Regional styles and groups are a widespread subject of research, and for good reasons. They can easily be defi ned and mapped – as well as delimited from other groups. Sometimes it is not as simple; a single context can contain objects or stylistic traits that refer to different parts of a group of individuals’ self-identifi cation,
each belonging to different kinds of relational networks. Thus, regional groups revealed in one aspect of the material record will not necessarily be the only possible way to divide the material. I will not abandon the notion of regional groups,
but I want to discuss what the regional patterns´of material culture signify, what their function was and how they interact with other spheres of material culture in cases where the regional group was different.

Nord for Esbjerg, i området mellem Sønderris og Guldager, under boligkvarteret Erisvænget (Esbjerg Kommune, Guldager sogn), er et af Sydvestjyllands ældste gravmonumenter udgravet. Der er tale om resterne af en mindre høj fra den tidligste del af bondestenalderen.

Monumentet er en lille forløber til de store dysser og jættestuer, der har domineret landskabet i årtusinder. Selve anlægget har i stenalderen bestået af en lille stenlægning, afsluttet af en flere meter høj stolpe. Senere er stolpen fjernet og anlægget dækket af en lav høj. Dette lille monument er lokalt et af de første eksempler på at mennesker bevidst har forsøgt at etablere ejerskab over landskabet.

This article will discuss the ceramic styles of the early Middle Neolithic Djursland. It argues for a new local style in the area, called the Blakbjerg-Brokhoj style, named after two causewayed enclosures that form the basis of this article. This style draws inspiration from the Virum style, which is characterized by massive decorations of whipped cord, but also includes many new MN I elements such as vertical bands and zipper patterns. It is further argued that this style co-existed with a more general MN Ia style and that these two stylistic appearances supplemented each other in the social network of the Funnel Beaker culture (FBC). An interpretation of this double stylistic appearance will be presented.

Abstract In a response to my paper “Neolithic population and summed probability distribution of 14 C-dates”, Timpson, Shennan, and Manning accuse me of making a series of inferential mistakes. Their argument is based on the opinion that if advanced statistical treatment of data is performed and an explicit null hypothesis is tested, then the argument is well founded. I argue that they ignore a series of underlying assumptions that connect the object of interest - prehistoric population - to the data they utilize - radiocarbon dates. In my article, I explored some of the issues regarding these assumptions and demonstrated that it is difficult to argue that these assumptions are true. If the underlying assumptions are not true, or it cannot be established whether they are true or not, further statistical analysis of the data will not provide a reliable result.

This paper assesses the use of radiocarbon dates as a population proxy during the north European Mesolithic–Neolithic transition. By addressing data from the Jutland peninsula, it is shown that the sum probability distributions are influenced by three human-inflicted biases. Two of these – changed ritual behaviour and changes of subsistence strategies – refer to past human activity, while the third consists of modern research strategies. The analysis questions the validity of sum probability distributions as a population proxy in a period where a society experiences a transformation process.

ABSTRACT The article presents the results of the first Bayesian model of a causewayed enclosure from Denmark. 21 samples were dated, some with multiple dates, giving a total of 41 dates. These dates are built into a model which includes archaeological priors in the form of stratigraphy. It is demonstrated that this enclosure can be dated to the same time as the majority of enclosures on the British Isles: the 37th century BC. Together with other early dates for enclosures, it illustrates that enclosure construction was introduced in South Scandinavia as part of a large European expansion of enclosures. With Bayesian modelling, we can provide better answers to more questions, both regarding intrasite chronologies and a wide range of chronological issues.

978-3-7749-4213-4 Titel auch als E-Book (PDF) erhältlich unter www.habelt.de BELTZ Grafische Betriebe GmbH, Bad Langensalza Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie. Detailliertere Informationen sind im Internet über <http abrufbar.

Redaktionen har så vidt muligt forsøgt at respektere ophavsrettighederne til bogens illustrationer. Føler nogen deres ophavsrettigheder kraenket og gør berettigede krav gaeldende, vil de naturligvis blive honoreret. En høj med stenlaegning fra tidlig yngre stenalder fra Erisvaenget ved Esbjerg.