What is it about?
Some of the most magnificent graves from the Viking Age have been opened and partly emptied. This include the two ship graves from Oseberg and Gokstad in Norway. This article dendrochronologically dates the opening of the graves to the late Viking Age and suggests that it was made in a deliberate attempt to destroy the burials' ideological function as memorials.
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Why is it important?
Prehistoric graves have been reopened for a myriad of reasons, including simple looting. By dating the reopening of the Oseberg and Gokstad graves to a particular, short period in the Viking Age, it is possible to see the act in the context of the larger political competition and use of ship burial symbolism in Scandinavia.
Perspectives
The research presented in the article is important because it points to the importance of also seeing events represented in the archaeological record as individual and contextual, and it shows that this is made possible through precise dating.
Professor Jan Bill
University of Oslo, Museum of Cultural History
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The plundering of the ship graves from Oseberg and Gokstad: an example of power politics?, Antiquity, September 2012, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0003598x00047931.
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