A parallel history: the archaeology of Hanseatic urban culture in the Baltic c.1200–1600

Abstract

The Hansa formed the principal agent of trade and cultural exchange in northern Europe and the Baltic during the late medieval to early modern periods. Hanseatic urban settlements in northern Europe shared many things in common. Their cultural ‘signature’ was articulated physically through a shared vocabulary of step-gabled brick architecture and domestic goods. Although the Hansa remains a monolith in the popular historical imagination, it is rapidly becoming a multidisciplinary field of study juxtaposing often-contradictory material and documentary sources. The redevelopment of towns on the Baltic littoral, particularly of those formerly behind the Iron Curtain, offers archaeological opportunities to create parallel biographies of medieval mercantile communities that avoid tautology but bring a new texturing to the reconstruction of cultural development in the region. The archaeology of the Hansa in the Baltic – as a case study in historical archaeology – offers the prospect of investigating some of the key attributes of pre-industrial European society on the macro-regional scale. Such attributes include the development of mercantile capitalism, Europeanization, colonialism, acculturation and resistance. Ceramic distributions are particularly sensitive to reflecting levels of adoption and resistance to Hanseatic cultural influences among diverse communities, notably in the spheres of dining practice and domestic comfort. The paper begins with a review of historical perceptions of Hansa culture in the region and how rescue excavation is now redefining a sense of identity among local communities in a changing geo-political environment.