Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2007, Page 46

Davide Zori
fishermen at Sebbersund, it seems odd
that people did not extract the iron clench
bolts from the planks for resmelting, as
has been observed elsewhere (Birkedahl
and Johansen 1995; Fridriksson and Her-
manns-Audardóttir 1992). Rather, the
investment of energy into these burials
represented by the deposition of clench
bolts suggests a purposeful symbolic
statement (see e.g. Sinclair 1995: 55).
Furthermore, in all but one of
the burials at Caistor-on-Sea, the clench
bolts were found on top of the skeletons,
just as in the three burials at Hrísbni, Ice-
land. The reused boat planks therefore
did not function as biers or coffins, but
rather as overlying covers or even as non-
functional objects placed into the grave.
Although coffin lids serve a practical
purpose, Julian Richards (1991: 115)
asserts that “this is really too mundane an
explanation. Given the Scandinavian tra-
dition of ship burial it seems reasonable
that the symbolism of the boats’ timbers
was intentional.”
In the North Atlantic cultural
area, the boat had great symbolic sig-
nificance, beginning in the early Iron Age
and continuing throughout the Viking
Age (Crumlin-Pedersen and Thye 1992).
In this larger temporal framework, Ole
Crumlin-Pedersen (1992) views buri-
als with parts of boats as belonging to
the same tradition as larger ship burials
(Oseberg, Ladby, Sutton Hoo) and stone
ship settings (Linholm Hoje, Jelling, Ales
Stones) that are collectively a religious
reference to the Norse and Germanic god
Frey’s ship, Skiðblaðnir (Christensen et al.
1992; Carver 1992; Green 1968; Krogh
1983; Ramskou 1976; Sorensen 1997). I
agree with Richards (1991) that the inclu-
sion of boat timbers with clench bolts in
burial contexts was meant to convey a
symbolic message related to the ship-bur-
ial tradition, but would push the interpre-
tation further and stress that the boat parts
were meant to convey the same message
as the whole ship, only at a different scale
and more affordable cost. As noted by Ric-
hards (1991), this interpretation has wider
implications for ritual continuation of the
ship burial tradition into Christian cem-
eteries, but also for the wider theoretical
possibility that the presence of the part is
equivalent to the whole in ritual contexts.
The identification of the unique
corpus of graves with clench bolts and
their subsequent interpretation as sym-
bolic boat burials was only possible
because of careful documentation and
differentiation of the clench bolt artifact
type. There is little doubt that misidentifi-
cation of iron artifacts has obscured other
examples of clench bolts in burials and
that this practice of including portions
of boats in Viking Age graves is more
widespread than currently appreciated.
In order for extant or future examples to
be incorporated into our understanding of
medieval ritual and symbolic practices, a
unified terminology differentiating the
clench bolt artifact type is a necessity.
VI. Conclusion
I argue throughout this paper that nails,
rivets, and clench bolts are significant
artifact categories for archaeological
analysis. Currently, widespread typologi-
cal inconsistencies exist in scholarly work
concerning these three artifact types,
hindering type identification, statistical
analysis, and comparative research. Nails,
rivets, and clench bolts have unique mor-
phologies and functions, which dictate
their use in specific situations. Examin-
ing the presence of the particular iron
artifact types in various archaeological
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