Research History Overview: From Ethnography towards Archaeology

Archaeological Perspectives on Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes and Resource Management in Interior North Norway - Marianne Skandfer

Marianne Skandfer [+-]
Tromsø Museum – The University Museum, UIT - The Arctic University of Norway
Marianne Skandfer is Professor of Archaeology at the Arctic University Museum at UiT –The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø. Her research interest focus is on hunter-gatherer knowledge acquisition and transmission, specifically on prehistoric technology transmission and resource management including human–animal socialities. She initiated the LARM project, and has published several papers on, among other subjects, early ceramic technology, material culture and identity, and human–animal relations in northern, prehistoric, hunter-gatherer societies. She is currently primary investigator in a project looking at demography and settlement in Stone Age northern Norway.

Description

Archaeological investigations in the interior of northern Norway came late and have been few compared with the coastal region. The first systematic surveys and excavations took place in the late 1950s, and up until the 1970s northern Norway’s inland region was largely limited to ethnographic studies of Sámi culture. The inland of northernmost Fennoscandia was one of the central regions for this, and the research focus was on ethnographic documentation of Sámi premodern lifestyles, including language and folktales, religious practices and beliefs, material culture and economy and, particularly, premotorized reindeer herding. The leitmotif was that traditional practices were under pressure from Western modernization, and had to be documented before they disappeared. Processes of change over time were seldom addressed, and the outcome of these studies could be said to have left an impression of a timeless Sámi past, although some of the ethnographic studies included archaeological investigations. The title chosen for this chapter is not meant to indicate a transition in disciplines and related methods from ethnography to archaeology. Instead, it should be read as indicating a transition in aims, goals and objectives over time for culture-historical research interest in Norway’s northern inland. In this chapter, central factors and leading figures for the culture-history investigations in northern Norway are presented, giving precedence to developments and research relating specifically to the interior.

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Citation

Skandfer, Marianne. Research History Overview: From Ethnography towards Archaeology. Archaeological Perspectives on Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes and Resource Management in Interior North Norway. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 31-55 Dec 2024. ISBN 9781781798171. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=33989. Date accessed: 11 Dec 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.33989. Dec 2024

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