Klavs Randsborg’s research while affiliated with IT University of Copenhagen and other places

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Publications (36)


Urbanizing Forest: Archaeological Evidence from Southern Bénin
  • Article

October 2019

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97 Reads

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5 Citations

Journal of African Archaeology

Inga Merkyte

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Søren Albek

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Klavs Randsborg

Until recently archaeological evidence predating the historically known Kingdom of Dahomey in southern Bénin has been next to non-existent. The situation changed when deep and long drainage channels were dug into the fertile soils at the modern town of Bohicon. In the sides of these channels, rich cultural remains appeared, confirming the assumption that high rates of soil accumulation have caused low archaeological visibility in the forest/former forest belt of West Africa. Geophysical mapping and extensive excavations have revealed two large settlements of 500-600 hectares each, partly overlapping but separated by 2000 years. This paper presents both sites – Sodohomé 1, the earliest site encountered so far in southern Bénin, and Sodohomé 2 (or Sodohomé-Bohicon) which dates to AD 900-1150/1220. Although the first has produced some remarkable results, for instance, an iron spearhead that is the oldest securely dated non-meteoritic iron object in Africa known so far, the focus is on the latter site where evidence demonstrates the existence of a true town with craft specialisation, industrial-scale iron production, long-distance trade and wide communication networks.


Kaup 2014: Archaeological Excavations & Research History

December 2016

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70 Reads

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3 Citations

Acta Archaeologica

The article is a report on field activities of 2014 at a renowned location of Kaup forest near Wiskiauten/Viskiautai, nowadays Kaliningrad oblast of Russia, and a sentimental journey through the research history in a region at the crossroads of ancient communication webs, and more recently – of diverse political agendas. Field activities focused on the so-called Barrow 1, the only known mound at Kaup dated to the Neolithic, otherwise dotted with burials of the Viking Age. It was an attempt to reconstruct barrow architecture, which has resulted in a deconstruction of previous views based on rather scarce excavation reports of the 19th – early 20th century. The Neolithic barrow of Kaup remains a unique testimony of the social complexity and spatial awareness of the early 3rd millennium BC when Europe was under the spell of the Corded Ware and other related cultural phenomena.


Social Dimensions of Early Neolithic Denmark

December 2014

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29 Reads

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8 Citations

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society

In 1947 C. J. Becker, in his fundamental classifying work on the Early Neolithic phase of the socalled ‘Funnel-Beaker Culture’, described this set of phenomena within a frame of reference which can at best be termed ‘tribal’ (Becker 1947). For instance, in the late period of the Early Neolithic, Period C of the sequence, he observes certain differences, primarily of the type of decoration, in the pottery of respectively Northern Jutland and Southern Denmark. This result is connected with the differential patterns of distribution for other cultural features including forms of burial. Accordingly, the southern complex is baptized ‘The South Danish Megalithic Group’, the northern one ‘The North Jutland Non-Megalithic Group’. In Southern Denmark simple—‘earth’—graves are very few, while a much higher number of dolmens with Early Neolithic C pottery is known. In North Jutland the number of earth graves is considerable, but the picture is blurred by a relatively high number of dolmens too. Each of these assemblages, and a few minor ones not to be mentioned here, is seen as referring to a ‘tribe’ or ‘a group of tribes’ sharing the said types of graves, decorations on pottery, and, for instance, specific types of weapons. No clear-cut borderlines can, however, be drawn between the complexes as the geographical differences of the distributions consist of statistical concentrations of one or another trait in one area rather than of mutual exclusions. Only the type of decoration on the North Jutland pottery does not seem to occur outside this zone, while the reverse is not the case.









Citations (11)


... Zangato and Holl, 2010;Killick, 2015a) and encourage caution even about recently reported, and much better contextualised, evidence of early (~1000 cal. BC) iron-production at Sodohomé 1, Bénin (Merkyte et al., 2019). ...

Reference:

Archaeological science in Africa: Twenty-one papers for the twenty-first century
Urbanizing Forest: Archaeological Evidence from Southern Bénin
  • Citing Article
  • October 2019

Journal of African Archaeology

... In the Lithuanian and Baltic milieu, with rather rare Neolithic and Bronze Age exceptions (Merkevičius 2016;Randsborg et al., 2016), burial in barrows was an Iron Age (Roman period to Viking Age) phenomenon. Within this defined area and period, only minor differences in barrow constructions exist, barrow forms being generally rather uniform. ...

Kaup 2014: Archaeological Excavations & Research History
  • Citing Article
  • December 2016

Acta Archaeologica

... Over the last fifty years, monumental cemeteries have been interpreted as territorial markers (e.g. Wierzbicki 1999;Gorczyca 2005), kinds of landmarks -stable components of communication networks (Hoika 1986;van Ginkel et al. 1999;Gorczyca 2005), or examples of rights to a particular area with its reservoirs (Randsborg 1975;Chapman 1981). They are also seen as a result of multifaceted confrontations between adjacent populations of the FBC, or rivalry between these farming communities and mesolithic hunters-gatherers (Czerniak 1994;Wierzbicki 1999;Müller et al. 2013). ...

Social Dimensions of Early Neolithic Denmark
  • Citing Article
  • December 2014

Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society

... Archaeologists and historians have offered major insights into the entanglement of European and local traders and political actors along the 300 km of coastline between the River Volta and Lagos lagoon in the past 500 years (De Corse 2001;Fuglestad 2018;Kelly 1995Kelly , 1997Kelly , 2001Kelly , 2002Law 1989Law , 1991Merkyte and Randsborg 2009;Monroe 2007Monroe , 2014Monroe and Ogundiran 2012 ;Norman 2009aNorman , 2009bNorman , 2011Randsborg et al. 2009;Strickrodt 2015). These works focus on the impacts and transformations affecting African societies and on the powerful political entities that were centered not on the coastline, but rather a few dozen kilometers inland, and which dominate the historiography of the wider region between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. ...

Graves from Dahomey: Beliefs, ritual and society in ancient Bénin
  • Citing Article
  • June 2009

Journal of African Archaeology

... This landscape organization is typical for the Saxonian and British Iron Age pit alignments (e.g. Stäuble [2002]; Rylatt and Bevan [2007]; Knight [2007, 210]; Randsborg [2008]). In these areas and in southern Scandinavia, they tend to succeed earlier axial forms of landscape lines. ...

Permanent Lines: Registered Territoriality in the Bronze Age?
  • Citing Article
  • July 2008

Acta Archaeologica

... Pare 1989, p. 81;Crouwel 2004;Randsborg, 2010, p. 251). A few finds confirm that people in Denmark have used horses as draught animals since the beginning of the Bronze Age or perhaps even the end of the Late Neolithic (Randsborg 2010). The most famous find in this respect is the Sun Chariot from Trundholm Mose or 'The Chariot of the Sun', dated to period II of the Bronze Age, which depicts a hoarse pulling the sun (Aner and Kersten 1976, no. ...

From Wheels & Yoke to Bridles, Goad & Double-Arm Knob: Introduction
  • Citing Article
  • December 2010

Acta Archaeologica

... Og hvorfor skulle han ha interesse av det? Både hans far og hans sønn reiste runesteiner i vikingtidens sedvanlige stil (Jacobsen og Moltke 1943;Imer 2014), og i hvert fall hans sønn lyktes svaert godt som haerfører og erobrer -og først og fremst det (Randsborg 2008;Kjaer 2014). Den rike intellektuelle arven oppstår fra intet og forsvinner like brått. ...

Kings' Jelling: Gorm & Thyra's palace Harald's monument & Grave - Svend's cathedral
  • Citing Article
  • November 2008

Acta Archaeologica

... Th e concept of a 'world system' , taken from Wallerstein's analysis of the emergence of modern capitalism, is a convenient analytic framework in which to understand these processes (Kohl 1987 ;Knapp 1998 ;Killebrew 2005 : 23-4). Globalization is still another heuristic framework currently being utilized in the analysis of the interconnected relations of the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean basin in the latter half of the second millennium bce (Randsborg 2001 ;La Bianca and Scham 2006 ). Th ese analyses emphasize the interaction between regions and political entities, wherein both major (core regions, palace systems) and minor (periphery and semi-periphery regions, small city-states) players impacted diff erent and dynamically developing levels of the system. ...

Archaeological Globalization: The First Practitioners
  • Citing Article
  • July 2008

Acta Archaeologica

... bought the collection. In the fi rst half of the 19th century the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen created a new exhibition concept for the collection of Nordic antiquities of the Royal Museum in Copenhagen (Randsborg 2008). Not only did he divide the Prehistoric material into a Three Age System; he also exhibited specimens with similar function densely aligned in typological sequences. ...

Detailed Bronze Age Chronology at 1850
  • Citing Article
  • November 2008

Acta Archaeologica

... In the countryside, peasant farmers produced surplus to support the elites and their oppida (Grau Mira 2003; Molinos and Ruiz Rodriguez 1994;Ruiz Rodriguez and Molinos 1993;Ruiz Rodriguez et al. 1991). Peer polities created competition leading to complexity, as long-distance trade created centers and peripheries that fueled the rise of marginal elite wannabes with prestige goods (Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978;Haselgrove 1976;Randsborg 1980;Wells 1980b). The organizing principles of these ''chiefly'' societies (reified by the interpretation of Iron Age elites as chiefs or petty kings) were assumed to be either kinship based or politically based, following the ideas of Service and Fried on the differences between chiefdoms and states (Chase-Dunn and Hall 1991;Miller et al. 1989;Renfrew 1986;Rowlands 1987Rowlands , 1994Rowlands and Frankenstein 1998;Rowlands et al. 1987). ...

Beyond the Roman Empire: archaeological discoveries in Gudme on Funen, Denmark
  • Citing Article
  • May 2007

Oxford Journal of Archaeology