B-CON

By focussing on Viking beacons - this neglected monument type, B-CON will create new state-of-the-art knowledge about how war facilitated the emergence of power at local to supra-regional scales in northern Europe during the early historic period (AD 500−1600). What was the role of war in the creation, consolidation and maintenance of collective identities, emergent polities and kingdoms in early medieval northern European populations and communities? The B-CON project, via 3 interlocking strands of multi-disciplinary research, addresses this fundamental question, key to our academic understanding of the emergence of nation states in early historic Europe. Department of Earth Science, University of Bergen will conduct the core lake sampling and analysis. The aim is to generate varve based high-resolution sediment proxy records spanning the period AD 500-1600. The sediments will be dated with aid of C14 and tephra layers (i.e. White River Ash in 853 CE). The cores will be dated for the last 150 yrs using 210Pb and 137Cs as well as tephra’s for enabling the lake proxies to be calibrated with instrumental records. These XRF geochemical analyses will make it possible to get a high precision dating of the times the beacons were lit on fire.

Funded by NFR 2022 - 2026