AY4013: VIKING ARCHAEOLOGY (2014-2015)

Course Aims: This course aims to critically explore the archaeological evidence for the origins, world-view, development and expansion of Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age, c. AD 750-1100. Students will gain an understanding of a major and catalytic period of European history that laid the foundations for many institutions of the modern Western world. As an introduction to the archaeology of the Viking Age, this course will provide students with: - an insight into the nature of Viking Age Scandinavian society and culture, including settlement and subsistence patterns, material culture, social structures, issues of identity and ethnicity, and world-views and mentalities from the traditional belief systems of the North to the introduction of Christianity - an understanding of the political developments in the Viking Age and the transformation from tribal- to state-based societies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, including the development of urban centres, coinage, and Christian monarchies - detailed knowledge of the geographical scope of the Viking world, including an understanding of the Viking diaspora and its long-term effects, including the complex patterns of culture contacts and environmental impacts that characterised Scandinavian raiding, warfare, trading, colonisation and settlement activities - an understanding of how archaeologists combine a range of sources (material, textual and environmental) to achieve a synthetic understanding of a discrete period of history Content: This course provides students with an overview of the Viking Age peoples of Scandinavia, and their dramatic expansion in the 8th-11th centuries AD. We will review the archaeological evidence for population and settlement patterns, ethnicity and social structure, the development of urban centres and commerce, and Viking Age religion, and will chart the political process that led to the rise of the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. This Scandinavian background will then be set in the wider context of the Viking diaspora, examining Norse contact, conflict, trade and colonisation from Canada in the West to the Asian steppe in the East.

This course may NOT be taken as part of a graduating curriculum with KL 4042.

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

View AY4013 Timetable

More Information about Week Numbers

1st Attempt: One 3,000-word essay chosen from a range of options (50%) and a project presented in the form of an A0 poster representing the backboard of a museum display (50%).

Formative assessment is provided for a mock-up of the museum display board, and during the seminars.

Formative assessment on essay subject proposals and the poster is provided using MyAberdeen’s assignment feedback form. Summative feedback is provided on detailed essay and project forms, and some specific notes may be written on the assignments themselves.

None.