The project will create a series of fora that will allow cross-European comparative, critical evaluation of how and why systems of administration and administrative networks evolved in emergent complex societies. Each component of the project will work at a series of scales: local; regional; national and European.
The key questions will be addressed via multi-disciplinary research examining assembly within the political development of kingdoms in Viking and medieval Scandinavia and those areas colonised and settled by the Norse.
In order to produce a set of comparative data, TAP will seek to create a cohesive account of the development of administrative systems within a wider European context. A joint GIS will serve as an important analytical tool together with visual analysis, GPS-survey and excavation.
The project will use the following methods
- The different components of the sites (e.g. mounds, booths, ‘law rocks’) will be studied using visual analysis. Data will be collected from national sites and monuments records (SMRs) and older maps. Important sites will be photographed and surveyed with a DGPS and/or scanned with LiDAR (e.g. for creation of 3D-models).
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The assembly sites will be investigated as possible expressions of power in the landscape and illustrations of the presence and development of collective identities in their respective regions.
- Relevant data from on-line maps and SMRs (assemblies, communication routes, churches etc.) will be entered into the joint GIS. The ‘intentional vicinity’ of assembly sites to archaeological remains and landscape features, will also be tested by statistical analysis.
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Who controlled the assemblies and which social groups and genders had access to the meetings will be investigated through written sources (e.g. charters, laws and sagas).
- How the formation of territories and assemblies related to each other, will be approached through geographic methods, i.e. assemblies will be analysed in relation to property ownership and characteristics of the farm to which the assembly belonged.
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How the assembly sites were chosen and established and how they contributed to collective identities will be approached through historic and ethnographic sources.
- How studies of law and administration have affected our modern view of the development of the past and the transition from ‘barbaric pagans’ to ‘civilised Christians’ will be approached through reading of modern topographical records.
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The way in which assembly sites and systems of governance have been treated in past scholarship will be scrutinised and reflected on to better contextualise the contemporary approaches of this project to the topic of early medieval and medieval assembly.