Towards a Refined Chronology of Prehistoric Pitfall Hunting in Sweden

Abstract

Among the most prominent prehistoric features in the boreal forests of northern Sweden are trapping pits or pitfalls used for hunting elk and/or reindeer. Even if often ascribed to the Viking Age and its trade in furs and other animal products, the chronology of these features has long been a matter of debate. In this article, a database of 370 dated radiocarbon samples from excavated pitfalls has been compiled and analysed using Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) modelling to create the most elaborate chronology of Swedish trapping pit systems so far. The analysis shows that the most intensive period of construction of trapping pits was in the centuries before the Viking period. This challenges previous interpretations of Viking Age resource exploitation but is in line with several other recently published studies concerned with resource exploitation, non-agrarian production, and trade connecting northern Scandinavia with inter-regional trade networks.

Coping with Risk. A Deep-Time Perspective on Societal Responses to Ecological Uncertainty in the River Dalälven Catchment Area in Sweden

“…Another recent Scandinavian study by Hennius utilized the KDE method to refine the chronology of pitfall hunting in Sweden [49]. His results challenged the previous assumption of the importance of hunting and trapping in the Viking Period.…”

“…This present work aims to refine the historical ecology of the region and provide a framework and methodology for looking at radiocarbon data. We move toward integrated landscape analysis (ILA) when associating these spatially and temporally explicit archaeological records with environmental information [49]. Historical ecology, a framework incorporating social and natural records to unravel correlations and consequences of social actions, heavily informs ILA [2,19].…”

Historical Ecology of Scandinavian Infield Systems

“…In large tracts of Scandinavia, however, outland forests dominated the landscapes, especially in the central and northern parts, e.g., [74]. These forested areas started to become colonized by farmers around the time when the infield system was established in the early Iron Age, a colonization probably driven by a quest for iron production sites [75,84,85], and hunting for crafts and trade [86,87]. Agriculture was thus established outside the main previously occupied agricultural regions, in an environment that initially can be described as a kind of macroscale outland in relation to agricultural regions.…”

The history of settlement and agrarian land use in a boreal forest in Värmland, Sweden, new evidence from pollen analysis

“…The timing of this vegetation phase coincides with the increased importance of production of goods such as smelted iron, and hunting as shown from other sites in the region (Svensson 1998;Emanuelsson et al 2003). The chronology of pitfall hunting systems in Värmland shows an increased emphasis towards hunting, with the highest number of pitfalls in the region dating to this period (Hennius 2020). New production patterns may have shifted the focus away from agrarian activities, resulting in linked changes in the vegetation community.…”