Abstract
This chapter discusses large cooking-pit sites as remains of large-scale gatherings, and investigates whether they could have functioned as early assembly sites. Three such locations in Vestfold county, south-east Norway, are discussed, with a particular focus on one of them, Lunde—one of Northern Europe’s largest cooking-pit sites. This chapter examines the possible relationship between them, medieval thing sites and later administrative areas. Cooking-pit sites fall out of use around ad 600, a change that corresponds with several cultural-historical transformations in Scandinavia. The different integrated components of the sites—cultic, juridical and military functions—were divided spatially at that time, perhaps as a result of changing social structures and establishment of petty kingdoms in Eastern Norway. In time, however, royal control over the thing organisation grew increasingly, leading to more formalised systems of governance and administration.
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