Poverty and Plenty in Scandinavia and the North Atlantic: Later Historical Archaeologies of Material Excess and Scarcity

(Hardback)

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Examining the archaeological material of the modern period, over a period of the last 500 years, this open access book presents a series of case studies that challenges the fallacy of Nordic egalitarianism. The widening gap between rich and poor Western countries is now a well-known phenomenon and while Scandinavia has often been hailed as one of the regions where inequality has been the lowest, even here a similar trend toward widening inequality has been observed. The topic of inequality has long been a major focus of interest within archaeology, but the goal and novelty of this volume is to start with the problem of material disparity by asking what this means, rather than starting with the problem of social inequality and trying to map observable material disparities onto its various conceptualizations. Key themes include variations between urban and rural contexts, as well as geographical proximity to centres of commerce and industry, different local/cultural valuations of especially consumer goods and discard practices. The result is an original study of a wealth of material culture that tells us how extensive this inequality actually was and the different ways it appeared in various societies. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the University of Iceland.

Reviews

This is a thought-provoking collection exploring the causes, consequences and expressions of material plenty and poverty in early modern and modern northern Europe. It addresses fundamental questions many archaeologists grapple with: how to explain disparity in material wealth of archaeological assemblages Is it always about social inequality What do discarded things say about lived experiences What emerges from these explorations is a complex image of thing-heavy and thing-lite worlds existing side by side. In these worlds, disparities originated not only from social and economic differences but were shaped by geography and connectivity, various socio-cultural norms towards consumption, worldviews and idiosyncratic choices. -- Magdalena Naum, Senior Lecturer in Historical Archaeology, Lund University, Sweden

Author Bio

Gavin Lucas is Professor of Archaeology at University of Iceland, Iceland. His main research interests are in archaeological method and theory and the archaeology of the modern world. Vivi Lena Andersen is Head of Exhibitions & Public Outreach and Senior Researcher at the Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark. gsta Edwald Maxwell is a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Archaeology at the University of Iceland, Iceland. Jonas Mone-Nordin is Associate Professor in Archaeology at the University of Stockholm and the National Historical Museum of Sweden, Sweden. Timo Ylimaunu is Associate Professor in Historical Archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland.