Sammendrag
The Mesolithic period in Norway covers more than 5000 years, starting with the earliest pioneer settlement around 9500 B.C. Though the early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers seem to have been highly mobile, remains of artificial shelters (tents, huts etc.) are still found at their settlement sites. From around 7500 B.C., we also find remains of more permanent dwellings: pit houses with distinctly sunken floors, surrounded by wall mounds. Dwellings, and details of their use, construction, layout and size, hold essential clues for archaeologists, offering insights into daily activities as well as settlement patterns and social organisation of prehistoric societies.
This thesis combines case studies, comparative studies and quantitative analysis of excavated dwelling remains. The main aim is to provide an improved understanding of the dwellings and dwelling traditions of the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Norway, in order to address questions of cultural-historical relevance. A total of 150 excavated Mesolithic dwellings are presented and analysed. More than 60% of these result from excavations within the last 15 years. Evidence for Mesolithic dwellings are still elusive over much of Europe, making the Norwegian record relevant for studies on the Mesolithic well beyond Scandinavia.
The analysis indicates that the dwellings of the Early Mesolithic (9500-8000 B.C.) were of similar size and shape: mainly 5-10 m2, with circular or oval floors. The typical dwelling appears to have been a fully portable family tent. Such tents are likely to have been part of the mobile lifestyle “package” of the pioneers along the Norwegian coast, along with boats in which the tent could be stored and transported.
In the Middle Mesolithic (8000-6500 B.C.), nearly every aspect of the dwelling traditions appears to change. Floor sizes now range between 3 and 40 m2. The floors are usually sunken and surrounded by wall mounds, suggesting that most of the dwellings were pit houses, but the variation among the dwellings appear more striking than the similarities. The transition to the Middle Mesolithic in Norway is characterized by forest growth, stabilization of sea levels along the coast, and final ice retreat in the interior areas. Recent research on Middle Mesolithic stone technology suggests migration of people from modern day Finland and Russia in the same period. All of these factors are likely to have contributed to the break with the tent-dwelling tradition of the coastal pioneers.
There is no distinct break in the dwelling traditions between the Middle and Late Mesolithic (6500-4000 B.C.). However, during the Late Mesolithic, dwellings (mainly pit houses) become far more numerous, and their remains show more signs of maintenance and reuse over long periods – sometimes more than a thousand years! This may reflect more fixed settlement patterns, but does not automatically suggest cultural continuity or decreased mobility. Abandoned pit houses, or even just the visible housepits, may have acted as “space attractors” in the Late Mesolithic landscapes, causing the same dwelling plots to be used across time and traditions. In the period 7000-5000 B.C., there is a gap between documented small (25 m2) dwellings. The small dwellings, which are the most numerous, are likely to represent single family households, while the larger dwellings may represent large task groups, or households consisting of more than one family. In the final part of the Mesolithic (5000-4000 B.C), the house size gap appears to close. The dwellings on each site become more uniform, and tend to occur in clusters – particularly in Northernmost Norway (Finnmark). Distinct signs of regional differences, as well as interregional contacts, are visible in many parts of the archaeological record in this late Mesolithic phase, including the dwelling remains.
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