Abstract
ABSTRACTSlaving was a prominent activity among raiding and mercantile groups operating across the early medieval world during the Viking Age (c. 750–1050 CE). Historical sources provide explicit descriptions of widespread raiding and slave taking by Viking raiders, as well as a substantial trade in captive peoples. Archaeologists, however, have long-struggled to identify evidence for the transportation and sale of captives in the material record. In order to begin addressing this issue, this study explores the comparative archaeologies and histories of slave markets in order to examine the potential form and function of these sites, and how they might have operated as part of the wider, interconnected Viking world.
Highlights
In 821, the early-medieval Irish chronicle, The Annals of Ulster, states that ‘Étar was plundered by the heathens, and they carried off a great number of women into captivity’.1 This was just one of a number of recorded attacks by Viking raiders on communities living in northern and western Europe during the eighth-eleventh centuries – the period commonly known as the Viking Age, in which captives were taken.[2]
This study has explored the comparative archaeology and history of Viking-Age slave markets
The discussion was intended to shed light on the means by which captives were distributed through extensive slave-trading networks in order to fulfil the demands of the markets that are known to have existed across the early medieval world
Summary
ISSN: 0144-039X (Print) 1743-9523 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsla[20]. The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’.
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