Settlement, Shieling & Landscape
The Local History of a Forest Hamlet

By Marie Emanuelsson, et al.
December 2003
Almqvist & Wiksell International
ISBN: 91-22-02035-7
154 pages, Illustrated, 6 ½" x 9 ¼"
$62.50 Paper Original


This book is the presentation of the landscape history of an entire forest hamlet and its inhabitants during the period of AD 500-1800, studied through an interdisciplinary approach. The ambition has been to focus on the daily lives of ordinary farmers, whose use of the outland made it an integrated part of the local economy. This is predominantly a presentation of new data regarding settlements and landscape history from a forested, so-called peripheral, area, based on the disciplines of archaeology, human geography and palaeoecology.

Contents include: Introduction, The project, General background, Outland use - chronology, expansions and recessions, Agrarian outland use, The study area, Goals and research agenda, Interdisciplinary practice, International visits and exchanges, Science and the public, The investigations, The settlements of the Backa estate, Settlement history in the valley of the Klaralven, Dalby, History of settlement and land use at Backa and Skinnerud from written sources, maps and the landscape, The archaeological excavations, The house constructions at Skinnerud, The social space at Skinnerud, The outland of Backa, History of the outland from maps and the landscape, The ancient monuments, The agrarian land use history, The shielding of Backasatern, History of the shieling from maps and the landscape, The agrarian land use history, The archaeological excavations, The house constructions, Backasatern - forest grazing, shieling or farm?, Conclusions: Settlement, shieling, landscape and the Backa estate, History of settlement, agriculture and outland use, The estate, settlement and the infields, The outland, A closer look at the agrarian outland use, Different methods - different land use histories, The history of Backasatern - a discussion, The people of Backa and their landscape, The 'dangerous' outland - fiction and material culture, Men and women in the outland, The dynamics of interdisciplinary studies.

Archaeology
Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology, No. 32

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