Abstract
The interpretation of the use and contextual meaning of fossil agrarian forms is connected with their age. In this article we discuss the dating and interpretation of a field wall in Öggestorp, situated on the northern rim of the southern Swedish uplands in the province of Småland. Öggestorp is a complex archaeological site dating from the early Iron Age (500 BC to AD 550). The site was also used for various forms of agriculture during the Middle Ages and in early modern times, a fact which complicates the dating and the interpretation of the agrarian features. We discuss the possibility and practical issue of dating agrarian sediments by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). By combining OSL and other methods, a reliable estimation of age can be established. The paper also deals with the possible implications of the OSL-method in relation to the current state of knowledge of agrarian structures. We show that a serious dating of agricultural remains must be based upon a critically used combination ofmethods. Without a well-argued date, it is difficult to relate any agrarian form chronologically to other remains in a fossil landscape of multilayered complexity.
Highlights
The interpretation of the use and contextual meaning of fossil agrarian forms is connected with their age
This means that the fields adjacent to the field wall were in use during the early Iron Age, as well as in medieval times
The typological dating of the field wall did not yield any certain results; it seems as likely to have been erected in the early Iron Age as during early modern times
Summary
The interpretation of the use and contextual meaning of fossil agrarian forms is connected with their age. The building of the field wall seems to have respected these monuments Grave monuments of this type are usually dated to the early Iron Age (Engman & Nordström 2001). The intra-site relations of the field wall imply that it was planned and partially built as a boundary between infields and outlying lands. They imply that it was probably constructed in the later part of the early Iron Age, depending upon the age of the two quadratic grave monuments. The Iron Age site, consisting of at least two farmsteads, is located on the land of two historically diAerent hamlets: Rommelsjö is situated in the southern part and Öggestorp in the northern. The field wall must be older than the late Viking Age or early Middle Ages
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