Arkeologen möter bävern

Abstract

A few examples of archaeological approaches to the beaver (Castor fiber L.) are given. A main source of inspiration is The Coles’ extensive archaeological record material and research on the beaver in Britain’s past, on which they established the beaver as a significant agent in prehistory. A small number of various south Scandinavian Mesolithic locales are focused. For comparison and contrast, records and interpretations from other disciplines are included. The bottom line of the paper is that Scandinavian archaeology has an unexplored potential in studies of beaver materialities. This concerns approaches to beavers’ connections with humans in social formations. It also concerns inclusion of the beaver and its materialities in landscape and environmental archaeology, as well as in cultural heritage and in historical and contemporary archaeology.

Human-beaver cohabitation in the Early and Mid-Holocene of Northern Europe: Re-visiting Mesolithic material culture and ecology through a multispecies lens

“…Zhilin (2020) has recently also drawn attention to the extensive record of organic tools made of beaver remains including mandible and incisor tools that form an integral part of the larger Mesolithic interface within the Eastern European forest zone. Similar beaver-procured tools have been reported from a few Mesolithic sites in Northern Germany (Schacht and Bogen, 2001;Schmölcke et al, 2017;Schuldt, 1961), the Netherlands (Coles and Kooijmans, 2001) and Denmark (Broholm, 1924: 133;Hatting, 1970), but previous work has paid surprisingly little attention to this beaver-related material culture and its possible significance (but see Hjørungdal, 2019a). Although ethnographic parallels have been invoked to interpret beaver-sourced tools, scholars have mainly highlighted the functionality of these objects and the capacity of Mesolithic people to make use and take advantage of the animal materials available to them.…”

“…To over-exaggerate, Early and Middle Mesolithic foragers in this region encountered the beaver as a key society-sustaining agent – as a nonhuman fishing aid or more-than-human fishing technology – whereas Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic societies increasingly relied on their own fishing infrastructure and self-devised fish-getting technologies at coast-inland interfaces, yet perhaps nonetheless inspired by the transgenerational experience of beaver geopraxis. The nature and significance of a human-beaver ‘contact zone’ as envisioned by Hjørungdal (2019b; 2019a) for the Southern Scandinavian Mesolithic thus likely depended on the critical intersection of lived human and beaver geographies and, perhaps more importantly, the extent to which beaver habitats were routinely visited, and thus integrated into broader forager landscapes. In analogy to other documented, integrated human foraging strategies such as ‘garden hunting’ in the Americas (Guiry et al, 2021; Linares, 1976; Stahl, 2020), we may refer to this strategy as ‘pond hunting’ or ‘wetland foraging’.…”

“…There is also evidence for beaver presence at the lakeshore environment of Järingsholm 2 in Northern Skåne, Sweden, before humans settled there in the earlier Mesolithic (Kjällquist, 2005). Hjørungdal (2019a) has further drawn attention to the interesting observation that some Early Mesolithic dwellings currently interpreted as anthropogenic resemble collapsed beaver architecture – circular structures with a simple opening. It has been suggested that because beavers and Mesolithic people were critically exposed to one another’s rhythms and practices and in some cases might have literally inhabited them, they have likely exercised mutual influence and perhaps imitated each other (Coles, 2008; Hjørungdal, 2019b; Overton, 2018).…”

“…While some of these tensions are unique to the contemporary period and more recent history, negotiations as to how humans and beaver should co-inhabit the landscape are not. Relations between humans and beavers indeed have a deep history (Coles, 2006;Hjørungdal, 2019aHjørungdal, , 2019bLiarsou, 2013) and both species have crossed paths under different ecological and historical conditions, and with varying consequences. Given the recent surge of attention on beavers' conservationist capacities, and the hope they continue to spark in the Anthropocene (e.g.…”

“…Little attention has been paid, by contrast, to the socio-ecological dimensions of human-beaver interfaces (but see esp. Hjørungdal, 2019a; Schmölcke et al, 2017). This is despite the fact that the engagement with animal bodies is often of key importance for human social and cosmological sustenance (cf.…”