The Political Economy of Stateless Societies During the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages of Thy, Denmark

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With National Science Foundation support Dr. Timothy Earle and his colleagues will continue their archaeological research on the Thy peninsula which is located I northeastern Jutland, Demark. Past work has indicated that the region is rich in archaeological remains including large umber of barrows or burial chambers. In his research to date, Dr. Earle has discovered and excavated a umber of sites associated with the Neolithic Period whe settled agricultural and village life emerged in Northern Europe. In this next stage of the project, he and his team will focus on the later Bronze Age and Iron Age periods. They wish to obtain detailed information on demography, settlement patterns and subsistence practices. They will also reconstruct forms of social and political organizatio and determine how these changed over time. To accomplish these goals, they will conduct broad scale surveys to locate architectural features and surface materials. These later will be collected and analyzed. The team will then select the most promising sites for large scale excavation. Following the development of agriculture and pastoralism in many parts of the world, one can trace changes in social organization which led, ultimately, to the rise of states. Early in this process chiefdoms arose and anthropologists still do not understand the mechanisms through which this happened. Some ague that populationn growth permitted by a more stable subsistence base provided the driving force while others poit to other factors such as the developmet of log distance trade. Over the course of the Broze and Iro Ages in Scandinavia, chiefdoms underwent cycles of rise and decline. The data collected from this area will allow compariso with cases from other parts of the world. From this it should be possible to separate historical particulars from the move basic underlying mechanisms. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will also increase our understanding of the processes which led to the rise of complex societies such as our own.