Under the direction of Dr. T. Douglas Price, Ms. Tina L. Thurston will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will continue her archaeological and associated documentary studies into change in the district of Jarrestad which is located in the province of Skane, southern Sweden. Throughout the Early and Middle Iron Age (ca. 500 BC - AD 800) Skane was composed of a number of stratified autonomous political systems. During the Late Iron Age or Viking period (AD 800 - 1100) these polities passed not only from prehistory into history, but also from existing as several middle- range societies to unification with an emergent centralized state which was developing in Western Denmark. The goal of this research is to understand how this change took place and what were the processes which underlay it. To achieve this goal MS Thurston will make use of early written documents and will also rely on the excellent archaeological data base available. In addition she wishes to study changes in the size and location of settlements and to determine the extent to which a changed settlement pattern reflects outside imposition by a dominant power. She will use the technique of soil phosphate analysis. Extensive research has shown that prolonged human habitation changes soil characteristics and results in a significant enrichment in phosphorus. Through controlled excavation in known sites - which will allow the construction of precise stratigraphies -, soil sampling and subsequent phosphate analysis, settlement size can be determined. Settlement hierarchies and the pattern of relationships between individual sites can then be established. While archaeological data make it clear that in some regions states emerge through a process of internal development, perhaps more often such complexity develops through a secondary process in which local groups unify in response of changes in neighboring regions. This took place in areas as disparate as lowland Middle America and Northern Europe. However relatively little archaeological attention has been devoted to secondary state formation and MS. Thurston's research will help to remedy this situation. The work is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will, hopefully, shed new light on how social complexity develops and finally it will assist in the training of a promising young scientist.
