ABSTRACT
The simplest traditional definition of a specialised landing place is an occupied location by navigable waters, together with the absence of an agrarian element in the layout of the site. If buildings are present, pit houses are more numerous than three-aisled houses, which in turn are few and typically withdrawn from the shoreline. Three-aisled houses may even be absent. Often there are traces of craft production, which in both number of types and scale differ from the agrarian settlements. This definition was proposed in the mid-1990s. However, investigations of more archaeological sites during the last two decades indicate that the picture may be more complex, and this article will discuss some of the evidence in order to reconsider old definitions.
Initially, the article sketches the shifting focus of archaeological approaches to the Viking-Age landing places from the 1960s until today. For a period, the attention was on modest-sized landing places, while in later decades the emporia and trading places have yet again come into focus. Regardless of research interest, new archaeological sites uncovered since the mid-1990s show that both definitions and typology might need adjustments. Together with topography, the layout of the settlement has been crucial in order to differentiate between the specialised landing places and the agrarian farms. Another important aspect has been the traces of craft production on a large scale as well as trade, which are not found in the rural part of society. Excavations have demonstrated that some coastal sites have had extensive refining of one or two types of raw material and a mixture of several three-aisled houses and many pit houses. However, this combination of buildings and waste from craft production has also been found at inland settlements disconnected from navigable streams and coast. Crucially, this shows that production is not exclusively connected to coastal sites or magnates’ residences. Ongoing studies of magnates’ residences suggest that they have been assembly sites with numerous pit houses as temporary accommodation for visiting crowds and maybe with a riverine landing place connected to the residential complex. The new evidence challenges old definitions and terminologies of Viking-Age landing places.
