Burial : settlement relations at Forsandmoen, Southwest Norway

Abstract

In 2017, a pre-development excavation of two burial mounds and surrounding buildings was carried out within the densely settled archaeological site of Forsandmoen, southwest Norway. The investigation provided an opportunity to explore relations between burials and buildings. It is hoped that pre-development excavations can offer fresh insight into the earlier excavations and finds. Whereas the excavated buildings cover a time span of 2200 years, all the burials in Forsandmoen appear to be from AD 300–550. This evidence leads into discussions of social changes in the Late Roman Iron Age/Migration Period, the construction and use of material culture, as well as source critical and methodological challenges. The ‘construction process appears to have been more important in the local community in the Late Roman Iron Age, pinpointing a change between the two periods. The investment in building new monuments in the Late Roman Iron Age might point towards larger changes starting far earlier than the discussed break at the end of the Migration Period. The burial practice in the Late Roman Iron Age could further hint at the necessity to direct more archaeological attention towards the act of constructing material culture. Repeated use of the monuments in the Migration Period underlines that reuse and the multitemporal should be regarded more as the rule than the exception in our investigation of material culture.