Marie Kanstrup

• PhD
• Research Assistant at Aarhus University

The Viking Age was a dynamic period, with local centres and urban sites engaging to varying degrees in local, regional and interregional networks. While the role of certain northern towns in these networks is relatively well-known and the related knowledge up to date, other towns appear to have received comparatively little recent attention. This s...

The medieval church and cemetery of Westerhus (Västerhus) is situated on the island of Frösön in the province of Jämtland, Mid-Sweden. The site was completely excavated and underwent anthropological analysis, published by Nils-Gustaf Gejvall in 1960. A number of early radiocarbon datings were later obtained (Gejvall 1968). In 2009 a new study of th...

An abundance and diverse range of prehistoric fishing practices was revealed during excavations between 2012 and 2022 at the construction site of the Femern Belt Tunnel, linking the islands of Lolland (Denmark) and Femern (Germany). The waterlogged parts of the prehistoric Syltholm Fjord yielded well preserved organic materials, including the remai...

In the research project ”Vikingernes Aros”, funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture (2021-0002), several natural scientific methods have been combined to analyse a burned Viking-Age house located in Aarhus, Denmark, dating to ca. 980 CE. What was the function of the house and what are the indications for interregional contacts?

We present the excavation results from a Middle Neolithic site associated with the Funnel Beaker Culture. Within two overlying house phases, a recessed area was recorded, which had been constructed using different sized pebbles. The arrangement and form of the feature clearly indicated anthropogenic origin and is understood as belonging to one of t...

An excavation of an Early Iron Age village near Aalborg in Denmark uncovered the jaws and skull fragments from a small mammal that were morphologically identified to the genus Crocidura (white‐toothed shrews). Three Crocidura species are known from prehistoric continental Europe but none of them are distributed in Scandinavia, which is why this sur...

In 2015-2017, East Jutland Museum excavated a series of well-preserved prehistoric and early historic trackways at Kastbjerg Å in the Kastbjerg Å river valley (eastern Jutland, Denmark). In this article, we will present the earliest of the in situ preserved structures, the Middle Neolithic trackway A20, and the high-precision dating of this structu...

This paper aims to review the role of Panicum miliaceum cultivation in the Late Bronze Age within present-day Denmark. An archaeobotanical analysis of a recently discovered assemblage of charred remains, including a larger proportion of millet, functions as an onset for the investigation. A contextual approach at the site level is used to discuss t...

During the last two decades the radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) dating of hydroxyapatite archaeological cremated bones has become standard practice. Various pretreatment procedures exist among different laboratories of which some include fixation of SO 2 using “Sulfix” prior to CO 2 reduction. Recently it was reported that the use of Sulfix may cause the resul...

The Danish Palaeolithic began during the Lateglacial (approximately 12,350 calBC) and lasted for about four thousand years. Only a handful of sites and organic stray finds have been precisely dated. And it is primarily on these that a preliminary chronological framework has been built. Similarly, numerous hypotheses on palaeohistory, typology, and...

Breonze Age antler axes – dating and depositional context Antler axes are typically associated with the Mesolithic, but this article presents a group of antler axes from the Danish Bronze Age, when this artefact type surprisingly turns up again after an absence from the tool inventory of more than 2000 years (fig. 1). These artefacts may be found i...

The human remains recovered from the famous Bjerringhøj Viking Age burial in Denmark have been missing for more than 100 years. Recently, an assemblage of bones resembling those recorded at Bjerringhøj—some with adherent textiles—were discovered in a misplaced box in the National Museum of Denmark. Here, the authors use new skeletal and comparative...

Tollund Man is one of the most famous Iron Age bog bodies due to his well-preserved head. Since he was unearthed in 1950 in Bjældskovdal, Denmark, he has been subjected to several scientific investigations, but until now no attempts to reconstruct his general diet through isotope analyses have been conducted. Furthermore, previous radiocarbon ( ¹⁴...

I 2011 udgravede arkaeologer fra Moesgaard Museum lokaliteten FHM 5193 Blåbaerhaven mellem Lystrup og Hjortshøj (ca. 2,6 Ha). Der erkendtes kulturlag, gruber inkl. ild-/kogestensgruber og et to-skibet hus. Ud fra de arkaeologiske fund kunne anlaeggene dateres til tragtbaegerkultur, muligvis enkeltsgravskultur, bronzealder og muligivs aeldre jernald...

Galgedil is a Viking Age cemetery located in the northern part of the Danish island of Funen. Excavations at the site revealed 54 graves containing 59 inhumations and 2 cremation burials. Previous study of the remains to date has included light isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in collagen (10 samples) and the radiocarbon determination of the age of...

Current concepts of prehistoric manuring are founded on limited and mainly circumstantial evidence, giving rise to much ambiguity with respect to the onset of systematic use of manure to enhance cerealproduction. This paper reports carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) contents and isotopic compositions (δ13C, δ15N) of charred grains of naked barley, emmer a...

The spread of farming from western Asia to Europe had profound long-term social and ecological impacts, but identification of the specific nature of Neolithic land management practices and the dietary contribution of early crops has been problematic. Here, we present previously undescribed stable isotope determinations of charred cereals and pulses...

Systematic use of animal manure has been demonstrated to be detectable in the plant δ15N value but evidence of manure affecting isotopic composition is mainly based on studies of fresh plant material. These findings can potentially be applied to archaeobotanical assemblages and thus provide information about prehistoric manuring practice. Prehistor...

The shortage of plant-available nutrients probably constrained prehistoric cereal cropping but there is very little direct evidence relating to the history of ancient manuring. It has been shown that the long-term addition of animal manure elevates the δ(15)N value of soil and of modern crops grown on the soil. We have examined the δ(15)N and δ(13)...

The Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in north-west Europe has been described as rapid and uniform, entailing a swift shift from the use of marine and other wild resources to domesticated terrestrial resources. Here, we approach the when, what and how of this transition on a regional level, using empirical data from Öland, an island in the Baltic Sea...