“Continuity and change” is a central axiom of historical writing and an unavoidable epistemological conundrum for archaeology. Traditionally, archaeologists have ordered the tangible traces from past human lives – material culture – by building chronological phases or boxes, filling them up with static characteristics – continuities, and drawing their edges as if they were clear-cut cultural revolutions – changes. In response, recent discussions have stressed how all things are in a constant process of becoming, as the relations they partake in and are made of are reshuffled and redefined.

Acknowledging the messiness of change, however, leaves archaeology facing some crucial methodological challenges:

1. although all things change, they do so at different tempos, rapid and slow, on the short-term to the long-term – how are we to write a coherent historical narrative that is not just piling up but interlinking multiple temporal scales?
2. focusing on a specific temporal scale typically leads to a narrow focus on one social scale, i.e. the individual, the community or the cultural group – how are we to weave past human lives into the grand narratives?
3. while biographical approaches to change offer to capture change as process, its storytelling still needs events to unfold – how are we to evaluate which changes are significant, catalyzing the development of the narrative?

The Late Iron Age in South Scandinavia (c. 400-1000 CE) is a fantastic laboratory for developing new perspectives on the archaeology of change. As other parts of Europe in this period, the region was impacted by the collapse of the Roman economic system, climate crises, pandemics, the emergence of new Eurasian trading networks, and the expansion of Christianity. Its archaeology testifies to multiple transformations at different scales, from the reshaping of entire settlement landscapes to stylistic innovations in the rendering of the eye of an animal on a metal brooch to upheavals in the genetic make-up of regional population groups. These phenomena have mostly been addressed in isolation, taking a helicopter view to identify broad regional patterns, thus disregarding the importance of communities as the actual nexus for most – if not all - social and cultural changes in this period. The patterns are typically refitted to the grand narratives with broad strokes and coarse chronological anchor points. However, recent developments in radiocarbon dating and chronological modelling have begun to revolutionize archaeology’s understanding of change by bringing it closer to the temporal scale of past human lives.

The archaeological site of Lindholm Høje (LHH) is the perfect place to test this potential. Uniquely preserved and fully excavated, the burial ground was in continuous use for more than 600 years (c. 400-1000 CE). It is the only site from this period in South Scandinavia where we can follow the trajectory of a single community over time through its rich and varied burial practices, and not least its adjacent settlement – itself only partly excavated.

The project’s design

At the intersection of evolving theoretical positions, methodological innovations and untapped empirical potential, the goal of MILESTONE is to ignite an archaeologically founded discussion of social and cultural change, answering the question: when is change tangible and significant for past human lives? MILESTONE’s core hypothesis is that some changes, big or small, do impact people’s lives to a greater extent than others. These may be milestones – i.e. changes made significant by their relations to other co-occurring changes; and resonances – i.e. changes bringing or bearing the potential for further changes. Together, they define the trajectory of a community – less linear than biography and less judgmental than progress, this notion allows “shifting gears” between different temporal and social scales within the same narrative.

In practice, MILESTONE will pursue three main research objectives:

1. Mapping change in a broad range of proxies for past human lives (material culture, mobility, diet, burial practices, demographic composition)
2. Establishing chronological anchor points, intervals and durations for the different tempos of change
3. Discussing significant change through relations between different proxies for change – milestones in the trajectory of LHH’s community.

The core project group is formed by PI Sarah Croix and four postdocs; their work is supported by four key research institutions: the ERC funded LUMIERE Lab at the Free University Brussels; the Aarhus AMS Center; the Museums of Northern Jutland; and the Laboratory of Biological Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen.