Abstract
From the late Roman Iron Age, stone enclosures and houses with a stone foundation have been built on Gotland. Stone enclosures have generally been interpreted as fences between the infields and the outlying land. I will argue that this explanation is insufficient and that we also have to consider the enclosures' symbolic and social significance. The stone enclosures were part of people's everyday practice as they moved through the landscape, and the enclosures structured the reality. The stone enclosures can be seen as both linking and separating, and one interpretation put forward is that the enclosures "embody" the social structure.
Highlights
From the late Roman Iron Age, stone enclosures and houses with a stone foundation have been built on Gotland
If we look at the stone enclosures' function as fences, their effect could be questioned
If we look at the stone enclosures as mere fences we will see in them a separation function; they demarcate the infield from the outlying land and separate humans from animals
Summary
From the late Roman Iron Age, stone enclosures and houses with a stone foundation have been built on Gotland. ) (Carlsson 1979:85f) Such a movement of the settlement and division of the land requires, as I see it, some kind of centralized power (cf the regulations (Sw. slciften) of the villages in the 18th and 19th centuries) These prerequisites did not exist on Gotland in the Roman Iron Age, and such model» are not appropriate when discussing the early Iron Age. I do believe, on the other hand, that an analysis of the systems of enclosures could tell us something about the social structure which affected the organization of the settlement. East of the infields are 64 so-called grinding furrows (Sw. svcircisliptzingsrctntzor)
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