Roads to complexity
Hawaiians and Vikings compared
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1080/21662282.2018.1468147Keywords:
Comparative archaeology, analogies, Vikings, Hawaiian states, complex societiesAbstract
The purpose of this paper is to analyse roads to complexity and societal development. By comparing the processes leading to complexity in Late Iron Age and early Viking society in South Scandinavia with the pre-contact Hawaiian state, I set the framework for a comparative archaeology and suggest that society in the Viking Age was not a state. I reach this conclusion within a comparative framework, by looking at comparable but also different processes in both places over time between the subject and source, in Scandinavia and Hawaii. I estimate how important geographic, cultural, technological, ideological, and ecological factors were for the development and change in both places in general and for the advent of the complexity in particular. I suggest that the analogical approach gives us a less biased perspective in both places, because we avoid partial metanarratives, such as for example teleological, nationalist narratives. Using this approach, we will discover new aspects that cannot be identified in isolation.
References
Bagge, S., 1999. The structure of the political factions in the internal struggles of the Scandinavian countries during the high middle ages. Scandinavian Journal of History, 24, 299–320. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468759950115719
Barrett, J.H., 2008. What caused the Viking Age ? Antiquity, 82, 671–685. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00097301
Beaglehole, J.C., ed., 1967. The voyage of the resolution and discovery 1776-1780. The journals of captain james cook on his voyages of discovery. Vols. 3, in 2 parts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braudel, F., 1980. On History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Burström, M., 1993. Silver as bridewealth, an interpretation of Viking Age silver hoards on Gotland, Sweden. Current Swedish Archaeology, 1, 33–37.
Champion, T.C., ed., 2005. Centre and periphery. Comparative studies in archaeology. In: One world archaeology 11. London and New York: Routledge.
Christensen, T., 2015. Lejre bag myten. De arkæologiske udgravninger. Denmark: Jysk Arkæologisk Selskabs Skrifter 87: Højbjerg.
Crumley, C.L., 1995. Hetearchy and the analysis of complex societies. In: R.M. Ehrenreich, C.L. Crumley, and J.E. Levy, eds. Heterarchy and the analysis of complex societies. Washington, D.C.: Archaeological papers of the American Anthropological Association, Vol. 6, 1–5.
Dobat, A.S., 2009. The state and the strangers: the role of external forces in a process of state formation in Viking Age South Scandinavia (c. AD 900-1050). Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 5, 65–104. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VMS.1.100674
Drennan, R.D., et al. 2012. Comparative archaeology. A commitment to understanding variation. In: M.E. Smith, ed. The comparative archaeology of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–3.
Earle, T. and Spriggs, M., 2015. Political economy in prehistory. A marxist approach to pacific sequences. Current Anthropology, 56 (4), 515–544. https://doi.org/10.1086/682284
Feinman, G.M., 2012. Comparative frames for the diachronic analysis of complex societies. In: M.E. Smith, ed. The comparative archaeology of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 21–43.
Gillespie, S.D., 2000. Levi Strauss: maison and Société à Maisons. In: R.A. Joyce and S.D. Gillespie, eds. Beyond kinship. social and material reproduction in house societies. Philadelphia: Penn, University of Pennsylvania Press, 22–52.
Glørstad, Z.T. and Melheim, L., 2016. Past mirrors: thycydides, Sahlins and the Bronze and Viking Ages. In: Z.T. Glørstad, H. Glørstad, and L. Melheim, ed. Comparative perspectives on past colonisation, maritime interaction and cultural integration. Sheffield: Equinox, 87–108.
Goldman, I., 1970. Ancient polynesian society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Grabowski, R., 2014. Identification and delineation of settlement space functions in the South Scandinavian Iron age: theoretical perspectives and practical approaches. Journal of Archaeology and History, 12, 3–57.
Gräslund, B. and Price, N., 2012. Twilight of the gods? The ‘dust veil event’ of AD 536 in critical perspective. Antiquity, 86 (332), 428–443. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00062852
Gregory of Tours., 1974. Historia Francorum. London: Penguin books.
Hawking, S.W., 1974. Black hole explosions. Nature, 248, 30–31. https://doi.org/10.1038/248030a0
Hedeager, L., 1992. Iron age societies. From tribe to state in Northern Europe. 500 BC to AD 700. Oxford: Blackwell.
Holst, M.K., 2010. Inconstancy and stability – large and small farmsteads in the village of Nørre Snede (Central Jutland) in the first millennium AD. Siedlungs- Und Küstenforschung Im Südlichen Nordseegebiet, 33, 155–179.
Holst, M.K., 2014. Warrior aristocracy and village community. In: E. Stidsing, K.H. Nielsen, and R. Fiedel, eds. Wealth and complexity. Economically specialised sites in late iron age Denmark. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 179–198.
Hommon, R., 2013. The ancient Hawaiian state: origins of a political society. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Iteanu, A., 2009. Hierarchy and power. A comparative attempt under asymmetrical lines. In: K.M. Rio and O.H. Smedal, eds. Hierarchy. persistence and transformation in social formation. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 331–348.
Jessen, M.D. and Holst, M.K., 2008. Om huse og slægtskab i Skandinaviens yngre jernalder. Jordens Folk, 3, 44–51.
Jørgensen, L., 2010. Gudme andTissø. Twomagnate’s complexes in Denmark from the 3rd to 11th Cent. AD. In: B. Ludowici, ed. Trade and communication networks of the first millennium AD in the northern part of central Europe: central places, beach markets, landing places and trading centres. Hannover: Neue Studien zur Sachsenforschung, Vol. 1, 273–286.
Kirch, P.V., 2000a. Temples as “Holy houses”: the tranformation of ritual architecture in traditional Polynesian societies. In: R.A. Joyce and S.D. Gillespie, eds. Beyond kinship. Social and material reproduction in house societies. Philadelphia: Penn, University of Pennsylvania Press, 103–114.
Kirch, P.V., 2000b. On the road of the winds. An archaeological history of the Pacific Islands before European contact. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kristiansen, K., 2016. Bronze Age Vikings? A comparative analysis of deep historical structures and their dynamics. In: Z.T. Glørstad, H. Glørstad, and L. Melheim, ed. Comparative perspectives on past colonisation, maritime interaction and cultural integration. Sheffield, Bristol: Equinox, 177–186.
Kristiansen, K., 2017. The nature of archaeological knowledge and its ontological turns. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 50 (2), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2017.1372802
Ladefoged, T. and Graves, M., 2006. The formation of Hawaiian territories. In: I. Lilley, ed. Archaeology of Oceania, Australia and the Pacific Islands. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 259–283.
Leslie, S., et al., 2015. The fine scale genetic structure of the British population. Nature, 519, 309–314. doi:10.1038/nature14230
Ljungqvist, J. and Frölund, P., 2015. Gamla Uppsala – the emergence of a centre and a magnate complex. Journal of Archaeology and Ancient History, 16, 1–29.
Løvschal, M., 2017. Emerging boundaries. Social embedment of landscape and settlement divisions in Northwestern Europe during the first Millennium BC. Current Anthropology, 55, 725–750.
Löwenborg, D., 2012. An Iron Age Shock Doctrine – did the AD 536-7 event trigger large-scale social changes in the Mälaren valley area? Journal of Archaeology and Ancient History, 4, 1–29.
Näsman, U., 2006. Danerne og det danske kongeriges opkomst. Om forskningsprogrammet ‘fra stamme til stat i Danmark’. Kuml, 205–237.
Näsman, U., 2012. Comments on “An iron age shock doctrine: the 536-37 event as a trigger of large-scale social change in the Mälaren valley area” by Daniel Löwenborg.? DANISH JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 131 Journal of Archaeology and Ancient History, (4), 5–17. Available from: http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/digitalAssets/484/c_484746-l_3-k_log_jaah2012_4_lowenborg.pdf
Price, N., 2016. Pirates of the North Sea? The Viking ship as political space. In: Z.T. Glørstad, H. Glørstad, and L. Melheim., eds. Comparative perspectives on past colonisation, maritime interaction and cultural integration. Sheffield, Bristol: Equinox, 149–176.
Ravn, M., 1993. Analogy in Danish Prehistoric Studies. Norwegian Archaeological Review, Vol.26 (2), 59–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.1993.9965559
Ravn, M., 2003. Death ritual and germanic social structure (ca. AD 200-600). Oxford: BAR international series 1164.
Ravn, M., 2011. Ethnographic analogy from the Pacific: just as analogical as any other analogy. World Archaeology, 43 (4), 716–725. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2011.624781
Ravn, M. et al. in prep. Erritsø – A fortified early viking age manor near Lillebælt. New investigations and research perspectives. To be published in proceedings from the 36th interdisciplinary Sachsensymposium.
Renfrew, C. and Cherry, J., eds., 1986. Peer polity interaction and socio-political change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Roesdahl, E. 2016. The unification process of the Danish Kingdom –and the Danish Husebyer and their owners. In: L.E. Christensen, T. Lemm, and A. Pedersen, Ed. Husebyer – status quo, open questions and perspectives. Vol. 20:3 Jelling Series, Copenhagen: Publications from the National Museum. Studies in Archaeology & History, 175–182.
Roscoe, P., 2009. On the ‘Pacification’ of the European Neolithic: ethnographic analogy and the neglect of history. World Archaeology, 41, 578–588. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240903345621
Rousseaux, G., 2013. The basics of water waves theory for analogue gravity. In: D. Faccio, et al., ed. Lecture Notes in Physics. Analogue gravity phenomenology: analogue spacetimes and horizons from theory experiment. Vol. 870. Switzerland: Springer, Cham, 81–107.
Sahlins, M., 1958. Social stratification in Polynesia. Seattle: American Ethnological society.
Sahlins, M., 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sand, C., 2002. Melanesian tribes vs. Polynesian Chiefdoms: recent archaeological assessment of a classic model of sociopolitical types in Oceania. Asian Perspectives, 41, 2,284–296. https://doi.org/10.1353/asi.2003.0010
Sigurdsson, J.V., 2008. Det norrøne samfunnet. Vikingen, kongen, erkebiskoppen og bonden. Oslo: Pax.
Smith, M.E., ed., 2012. The comparative archaeology of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, M.E. and Peregrine, P., 2012. Approaches to comparative analysis in archaeology. In: M.E. Smith, ed. The comparative archaeology of complex societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 4–20.
Sørensen, T.F., 2017. The two cultures and a world apart: archaeology and science at new crossroads. Norwegian Archaeological Review, 50 (2), 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2017.1367031
Spriggs, M., 2008. Ethnographic parallels and the Denial of History. World Archaeology, 40 (4), 538–552. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240802453161
Spriggs, M., et al. 2016. Lapita and the Linearbandkeramik: what can a comparative approach tell us about either? In: L. Armkreutz, ed. Something out of the ordinary?Interpreting diversity in the early neolithic linearbandkeramik and beyond. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 481–503.
Sterrett, S.G., 1998. Sounds like light: einstein’s special theory of relativity and Mach’s work in acoustics and aerodynamics. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 29 (1), 1–35. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1355-2198(97)00027-0
Sterrett, S.G., 2017. Experimentation on analogue models. In: L. Magnani and T. Belotti, eds. Springer handbook on model-based science, chapter 39. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing, 855–876.
Turchin, P., et al. 2013. War, space, and the evolution of old world complex societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110 (41), 16385–16389. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308825110
Visser, M., 2003. Essential and inessential features of Hawking radiation. International Journal of Modern Physics, (12), 649–661. https://doi.org/10.1142/S0218271803003190
Vogt, H., 2017. From tribute to taxpaying: the changes in the understanding of private property in Denmark circa 1000-1250. Danish Journal of Archaeology, [Online], 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/21662282.2017.1323993 [Accessed 14th November 2017].
Wallerstein, I., 1974. The modern world system: capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. New York: Academic Press.
Wicker, N.L., 1998. Selective female infanticide as partial explanation for the dearth of women in Viking Age Scandinavia. In: G. Hallsal, ed. Violence and society in early medieval West. Woodbridge: The Boydell press, 205–221.
Wickham, C., 2005. Framing the early middle ages. Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wylie, A., 1982. An analogy by any other name is just as analogical: a commentary on the Gould-Watson dialogue. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, (1), 382–401. https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(82)90003-4
Wylie, A., 1985. The reaction against analogy. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, (8), 63–111.
Wylie, A., 1989. Archaeological cables and tacking: the implications of practice for bernstein’s ‘options beyond objectivism and relativism,’ . Philosophy of the Social Sciences, (19), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177/004839318901900101
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Counting from volume 11 (2022), articles published in DJA are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The editorial board may accept other Creative Commons licenses for individual articles, if required by funding bodies e.g. the European Research Council. With the publication of volume 11, authors retain copyright to their articles and give DJA the right to the first publication. The authors retain copyright to earlier versions of the articles, such as the submitted and the accepted manuscript.
Articles in volume 1-8 are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to DJA. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors can upload their articles in an institutional repository as a part of a green open access policy.
Articles in volume 9-10 are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to the authors of the articles respectively. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors can upload their articles in an institutional repository.
