What does the forested landscape of southeast Norway reveal about its Late Neolithic and Bronze Age inhabitants?
This thesis uncovers how the people living in southeast Norway from around 2350 to 500 BCE interacted with their forested landscape. Compiling and analysing 149 buildings across 56 sites, alongside an extensive array of archaeological and paleoecological data, it shows that though broader patterns align with developments seen across southern Scandinavia during this period, the region also displays unique trajectories. These include persistent mobile practices, such as hunting and gathering, alongside a gradual shift toward more agrarian lifestyles. Overall, the findings highlight a regional Bronze Age narrative driven by the environment. People living here organised their society around small, mobile and autonomous farm communities that moved between multiple clusters of farmsteads. Evidence from the Late Bronze Age reveals a society becoming more complex: building larger and more diverse houses sizes than previously, with settlements positioned closer together, but not forming typical hamlets known from other parts of Scandinavia and later periods.
Using an approach that combines ecology and feminist theory, the research presented in the thesis subsequently questions traditional narratives and emphasises marginalised perspectives. Ultimately, the thesis challenges the conventional notion of a singular Nordic Bronze Age, arguing that this concept is tied to specific environmental contexts, seen in Jutland, Scania and Jæren. Instead, it advocates for a pluralistic understanding of the period, which is explicitly explored as and argued to be evidence of multiple Nordic Bronze Ages.
Anette Sand-Eriksen successfully defended her dissertation on 27 June 2025.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Images of warriors, boats and weaponry in south Scandinavian rock art have been central to the development of models of the Bronze Age in which the colonial and extractive activities of travelling chiefs resulted in the emergence of a hierarchical society. To what extent do the motifs and distribution of the rock art in southeast Norway support or challenge such models, and how does this body of rock art relate to the landscapes described in the thesis?"
Evaluation committee
- Professor Joanna Bruck, University College Dublin (first opponent)
- Professor Kristin Armstrong-Oma, University of Stavanger (second opponent)
- Professor Per Ditlef Fredriksen, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
Supervisors
- Associate professor Steinar Solheim
- Associate professor Knut Ivar Austvoll (co-supervisor)
- Professor Mette Løvschal (co-supervisor)