High-Definition Archaeology, Small-Scale Narratives and Monetary Practice in Medieval Scandinavian Urbanization
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
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https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3047602Utgivelsesdato
2022Metadata
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Sammendrag
High-definition archaeology is an efficient tool to study medieval urban economic practices. Medieval economy has been synthesized in ‘grand narratives’ which obscure the regional and local variations of economic practice. Through examples from two medieval towns in Norway and Sweden the article aims to show regional diversity in monetary practices as an alternative narrative to the grand narratives that leave a dominant impression of the past as a linear and homogenous development. The article shows the complexity and dendritic development in early medieval monetary practice by using high-resolution data and elements from Social Practice Theory. High-resolution data is required to establish ‘dense chronologies’, which are of importance when reconstructing events and processes embedded in the archaeological contexts, as well as reconstructing norms and concepts of social behaviour embedded in events and processes.