ABSTRACT
The cultural landscape concept provides an explicit linkage between cultural remains, environment and the humans that created and occupied these environments. The archaeological record of the Iron Age in eastern Norway largely consists of burial mounds and individual finds of artefacts. Very few houses have been excavated, and while prehistoric field systems are common, there are few that can be reliably dated to the Iron Age. The beginning of the later Iron Age, the Merovinger period is marked by a dramatic increase in the number of, and changes in the content and form of the burial mounds. When visiting a monumental site, every archaeologist has experienced the conspicuous use of space at these sites. Even the most ardent opponent of post-processual theory would have to agree, at the very least, that at these types of sites someone was utilizing the space to impress something on someone else.
