A Multidisciplinary Study of the State

Summary

This chapter first discussed the strategy of the study:using three scales of analysis and multiple lines of evidence. A brief description of the classes of archaeological data used during the course of the research followed. The biases, problems, and advantages of historic texts were then discussed, and the combining of archaeological and historical data sets under the aegis of Annales School history was recommended. Finally, an alternative paradigm is suggested, that of prehistoric cultural geography, the integration of cultural geographic-landscape theory and method with locational and regional archaeological studies, but with a firm goal of contextualizing change through an exploration of social and ideological phenomena found in the documentary record.

The next chapter will focus on southern Scandinavia, from the period beginning in the Roman Iron Age and continuing through the Germanic era. Many inherent conditions in the natural and social environments of the region have important implications for the organization of Iron Age society and the development of the state in the Viking Age.