Søren Tillisch

Ladby Kirke er den ene af tre ødekirker i Naestved Museums arbejdsområde. Ødekirken i Bøgesø blev udgravet for et par år siden som omtalt i Liv og Levn 16 og er siden markeret med jordvolde, medens en hårdt tiltraengt restaurering af Vridsløse Kirke forventes indledt i 2004. På det seneste er Ladby Kirke blevet udvalgt som ét af 80 monumenter i Danmark, der vil blive restaureret af Nationalmuseet. På baggrund af den forestående restaurering blev der udtrykt ønske fra både Nationalmuseet og Naestved Museum om, at der kunne foretages en forudgående arkaeologisk undersøgelse af tomten. Kulturarvsstyrelsen gav tilladelse til denne undersøgelse i foråret 2003. Udgravningen blev gennemført i august 2003 i samarbejde mellem Naestved Museum og Københavns Universitet, idet udgravningen samtidig fungerede som uddannelsesgravning for de studerende. På en lille bakketop ret øst for Ladby-3 km nord for Herlufsholm-ligger ruinen af Ladby Kirke (fig.1-2). Ladby Kirke har siden sin nedlaeggelse som sognekirke i 1560 vaeret igennem en lang nedbrydningsproces, men samtidig har kirkegården omkring den vaeret i brug helt frem til 1861. Gennem tiden har der derfor vaeret foretaget vedligeholdelsesarbejder af forskellig karakter på ruinen. Gennem de nye udgravninger samt fornyede kildestudier er det lykkedes at komme til en bedre forståelse af kirkens historie, som det vil fremgå af det følgende. Ladby ligger ved en indsnaevring af Susåen nogle kilometer nord for Naestved. Den traditionelle forklaring på navnet er, at der er tale om en sammensaetning af olddansk lath-, der betyder ladeplads (af norrønt hlad-, noget opstablet) og-by. En tilsvarende tolkning foreligger for Ladby på Fyn. Imidlertid bør man her ved Naestved betaenke terraenspringene ved Maglemølle. Susåens bred ved Ladby ligger cirka 3 m over havets overflade. Derfor kan en egentlig ladeplads med adgang til havet først komme på tale efter etableringen af sluseanlaeggene ved Naestved og Herlufsholm i begyndelsen af 1800-årene! Forklaringen på navnet skal derfor formentlig søges andetsteds. I Naestved-kalendariet naevnes Ladby således med så forskellige stavemåder som Lathbü, Laadhby og Ladby. Hvilken af disse stavemåder, der er taettest på den oprindelige, og hvad den oprindelige betydning har vaeret, ved vi ikke i dag. Der er aldrig foretaget større udgravninger ved Ladby, men et gravfund fra 1825 af en rig grav fra yngre romersk jernalder med to fibler af guld med indfattede sten, jernringe og glasperler, samt et løsfund af et romersk drikkebaeger af glas gjort ved markvandring i 2002 (fig.3) viser stedlig aktivitet laenge før vi første gang hører om Ladby i Skovklosters grundlaeggelsesbrev af 1135 i. Graven kan dateres formentlig dateres til sidste halvdel af 300-tallet e.0. idet den minder meget om Årslevgraven på Fyn ii. Bemaerkelsesvaerdigt er det også at begge fundene er gjort 3-400 meter nordøst for kirken ved den samme grusgrav. Har der en gang ligget en gravplads her? Ladby er en typisk fortelandsby. På forten har man i moderne tid i terraenet villet indlaese et voldsted, men de fåtallige iagttagelser, som er udført i forbindelse med kloakering og draening i området, har vaeret resultatløse. Der er formentlig tale om naturlige terraenforhold, der på

Vestalindernes Hus (VI,1,5, se fig.1) var et af de første huse der blev udgravet i Pompeii efter udgravningerne påbegyndtes i 1748, nemlig i 1764-1769. Det er et af de største huse i Pompeii med en pompøs indgang fra Via Consolare bestående af fire halvsøjler oprindelig dækket med en kraftigt ornamenteret stukkatur. Tegninger fra 17-1800-årene, der bl.a. omfatter et snit igennem huset og kolorerede tegninger af alle vægge i peristyle viser at huset var rigt dekoreret med vægmalerier i især 4.stil og forsynet med flere fontæner. Fontænerne sørgede dels for kølighed i den varme syditalienske sommer, men derudover var de vigtige elementer i husets fremtoning, hvor også facaden spiller en vigtig rolle. I begyndelsen af 1800-tallet var huset et fast stop for de fleste Pompeii-farere, og det er formentlig på dette tidspunkt at betegnelsen Vestalindernes Hus er opstået som et smart påfund af datidens turistguider. At man kendte huset udmærket ses også af, at det spiller en hovedrolle i Lewis Bulwers “Pompeii’s Sidste Dage” sammen med Pansa’s Hus (Insula Arriana Pollinea).
De rige dekorationer er næsten forsvundet i dag, slidt op af 200 års vind og vejr samt ikke mindst to amerikanske bomber, der faldt over huset i et amerikansk luftangreb i 1943. Den ene bombe ødelagde dele af atriet ud mod Via Consolare  mens den anden bombe tilsyneladende faldt meget nær bymuren i den nordligste del af VI,1, sprængte det nordlige hjørne af peristylet bort og fik en teglpille i VI,1,4 til at vælte. Atriet er siden blevet restaureret og bomben har givet mulighed for et sjældent snit gennem et atriums konstruktion. Også peristylet er blevet genopbygget en gang i 1970erne, men det præcise årstal kendes af uransagelige årsager ikke.

Dette essay diskuterer forskellige nye arkæologiske teorier om Danmarks romerske jernalder (1-400 e. Kr.) i lyset af de sparsomme historiske kilder til samme tid fra græske og romerske forfattere. Det diskuteres bl. a. om der var en romersk bufferstat i Sydskandinavien i det 2. -3. århundrede e. Kr., hvilke former kontakten mellem Romerriget og Sydskandinavien antog, og om ritualer forbundet med den romerske triumf og Mithraskulten eventuelt blev indført i Sydskandinavien i 3. - 4. århundrede e. Kr.

There are innummerable barrows (‘kurgans’) on the
Eurasian Steppe - from the Altai in the East to the
Carpathians in the West. In the following the focus
will be on six of these barrows placed in the western
part of the Eurasian Steppe in what is today South
Russia and Ukraine. The area can roughly be named
the North Pontic, defined as the land between Don
and the Danube south of a line from Kiev east
through Kharkov to the Don bend and south to the
foothills of the Caucausus (figs.1-2).
There are three reasons for choosing these six
barrows (Kelermes, Certomlyk, Solokha, Kul-Oba,
Ordzonikidze and Alexandropol):
1. Their excellent state of publication allow a
thorough analysis of find circumstances and internal
relations.
2. They represent af time span long enough for
documenting possible time related variations.
3. Their long research history allows us to evaluate
interpretational variations within the archaeological
science.
The barrows occupy three different topograhical and
cultural historical positions:
1. The Kelermes complex in the Kuban area at the
foothills of the Caucasus
2. Kul-Oba on the Juz Oba ridge near Kerch - the
Greek Pantikapaion (Panticapaeum)
3. Certomlyk, Solokha, Ordzonikidze and
Alexandropol placed in a relatively small
geographical area on the Middle Dniepr.
They are all of the so called ‘Scythian’ period, i.e. the
7th to 4th centuries BC, and they are rich in finds and
complex features of depositional and structural
character. And in this very amount of finds and
features lies the problem that has been the prime
mover of this work, namely the tendency to interpret
a few of these finds independently from their context,
without taking the said context into consideration

Archaeological control of ancient writers?
Concerning written sources and material culture in South Scandinavia

Introduction
The antique written sources have in the last 50 years rarely been used in the study of South Scandinavian prehistory. This is primarily because of misuse in the early part of the 20th Century and the professionalization of archaeology after the 2nd World War.  As the interests of archaeology has moved from the local to the regional scale this has changed. However, there has been no theoretical or methodical discussion of the relation between written sources and material culture in Southern Scandinvaia in the past 10-15 years, despite a wide selection of sources being used in studies of material culture. This is problematical since much research suggests that great theoretical and methodical care is needed when approaching this problem.
   
Through a study of three examples the basics for a methodology in prehistoric societies like the one of South Scandinavia in the Iron Age will be laid down. The three examples are: Pytheas the Massaliot and his journey to the amber island of Abalus, the comparison of the exchange on the Gudme-Lundeborg ‘emporium’ with the Roman-Indian trade, and the historical-archaeological emergence of the >>Danes<<.

Written sources and material culture
The relation between written sources and prehistoric archaeology is ambivalent. Nothing like a written reference to enlighten a dry treatise! However, a direct relation between written and archaeological source is rare.  But an archaeological interpretation is pieced together by information from many sources, and given the close relationship to historical science, it is not prima facie feasible to leave out historical sources in archaeological treatises. The anthropology of antiquity is also important here since it considered the northern Barbarians as more and more wild and hotheaded, and contrary to this just and free, the longer they lived from the Graeco-Roman centre of the world. Likewise the southern and eastern Barbarians were said to be lazy and live under tyranny with reference to the climate in which they lived. In light of this the use of a written source in connection with archaeological material presupposes a careful consideration of its textual and historical context (fig.1).

The interrelation of the written soruces
The interrelation of the sources may best be described as an equation with plenty of unknowns. Overall we can discern two main groups of sources: mythological as those sources concerning the myths of the Hyperboreans and of Apollo, and of the factual historic-ethnographic sources.

The oldest factual source is undoubtedly the fragments of “On the Ocean” by Pytheas the Massaliot, mainly preserved in Strabo and Pliny. He was followed by a number of lost Hellenistic authors. In the 1st Century AD Pomponius Mela, Pliny and Tacitus all concerned themselves to some degree with lands now recognized as being in South Scandinavia, as did Claudius Ptolemaeus in the mid 2nd Century AD. This last work was however based on a compilation of no later than c. 110 AD by Marinus of Tyros. After Claudius Ptolemaeus there is no direct mention of the South Scandinavian area before the 6th Century AD writers of Jordanes and Prokopios.

Historiographical survey
In the early days of archaeology J. J. A. Worsaae, Oscar Montelius and Sophus Müller to a greater or lesser degree considered archaeology as part of the historical science albeit with certain specific core objectives related to material culture. It was only with Johannes Brøndsted that archaeology thought itself able to ‘control’ the written sources against the archaeological material (fig.2-3). This tendency was strengthened in the latter part of the 20th Century as the developments of the 1930es and 1940es were denounced, and processual archaeology reigned from the early 1960es onwards.
Ulla Lund-Hansens study of the Roman imports in Scandinavia changed this trend somewhat, and since then teleological projects like Fra Stamme til Stat in Denmark, the Borre project in Norway and the Svealand project in Sweden has dominated the archaeological research into the Iron Age in South Scandinavia.
Simultaneously with these developments other researchers have pointed out the complexities inherent in using written sources and material culture together, and more especially shown that Germania libera, a common denomination of non-Roman Germania, is a historiographic misnomer as well as Germania magna and Germania transrhenana, none of which are mentioned in the sources.
All this leads to the necessity of an evaluation of the relation between written sources and archaeological material in order to obtain a good basis for a future methodology.

Pytheas the Massaliot and the North
In international research there is no doubt that Pytheas’ visit to Abalus the amber island and ultima Thule far to the north was a real historical event. This has been somewhat questioned by Scandinavian archaeologists based on, as I see it, imperfect readings of the written sources and the lack of any direct evidence of such a journey. Such evidence should however not be expected from a single journey, and the preserved fragments are sufficient to make a few archaeological-historical suggestions, such as identifying the amber island as the former island of Thy in Northwest Jutland, and the idea of amber as fuel as one reminiscent of use of amber in conjunction with burial rites.

The Romans in India and in Scandinavia - an analogy?

Although South Scandinavia does not take up more than a few lines of Claudius Ptolemaeus’ geographical treatise of the 2nd Century AD the meagre information has in later years been used in conjunction with the rich finds of Gudme-Lundeborg and Himlingøje to argue for a close contact with the Roman Empire (fig. 4-5), and the trade has been seen as analogous to that between Roman Egypt and India. This is indicated to be wrong by comparing the archaeological material in South Scandinavia and India, and by comparing the continuity of the sources on India with the fragmentary state and diminishing amount of the sources concerning South Scandinavia. Thus we have for instance plenty of amphorae in India, and none in South Scandinavia, while we have at least one major work for the Romano-Indian exchange and only fragments for Romano-German ditto.

The ethnogenesis of the Danes
In the first half of the 6th Century AD the Danes are mentioned three times by the written sources, and although it is most probable that we will have to completely disengage Jordanes creation myth of the Goths from the usual connection to the assumed but unproven Gothic migration from Sweden around the turn of the era, it is still an important source. Thus the archaeological material of the time indicates the appearance of a polity in South Scandinavia, fairly likely to be connected with the Danes, and maybe even a pax danorum of the 6th-8th Centuries BC (fig. 6).

Cultural historical fragments
It is shown that it is both possible to falsify and to qualify archaeological interpretations using written sources. It is shown that Pytheas the Massaliots journey was a real historical occurence, backed by archaeological indicators. It is also shown that the Roman imports at Gudme-Lundeborg and Himlingøje does not seem to reflect a trade like the Roman on India, a direct comparison of the material and historical evidence would seem to exclude that possibility. Besides the sources of the 6th Century AD has along with the material culture strongly suggested the appearance of a polity centered on the Danes, and also shown that there is no inherent connection between Jordanes’ Gothic creation myth and the assumed Gothic migration.
Methodically it seems clear that material culture and written sources must be evaluated separately in order to judge the possibility for synthesis. Only after careful estimation of pros and cons may an argument be laid forward.
Summa summarum is that some modern archaeological interpretations of material culture are based partly on anachronistic readings of the relevant written sources. Thus while there is a a positive confirmation that the written sources even in South Scandinavias early Iron Age may be of use to the study of prehistory, there is also a warning that it is not always so. Very serious contextual considerations must forego any attempts to a synthesis between the two varying groups of evidence on the past (fig.7-8).
Not as printed in KUML.

This article aims at locating the Sinus Codanus of Pomponius Mela and Pliny the Elder as well as ascertaining the period of use for the name. It is also asked whether it is possible to correlate the written sources with the archaeological material, and whether the material indicates continuous or sporadic contact between South Scandinavia and the Roman Empire during the the 1st-4th Century AD.

A recent archaeological research trend claims great Roman ideological influence in Germania or parts thereof, especially in the military, cultic and burial spheres of society. This article investigates through tests of three groups of archaeological material in South Scandinavia whether the Romans were directly involved in the process of “Romanization”, or whether the Roman influences are more indirect.
The first part of the article consists of a presentation of the recent research into the matter as well as a discussion of the concepts “Roman import” and “Romanization”, as well as an analysis of the feasibility of using the Roman written sources in conjunction with archaeological material. In the second part it is shown through archaeological cases that the Roman influence of South Scandinavian archaeological material must be regarded as indirect rather than direct in strong contrast to many recent studies of the matter. It is concluded that while direct ”Romanization” may be observed in a few areas close to the borders of the Roman Empire this cannot possibly hold true for South Scandinavia.
Note: without German abstract and figures.
From EAZ 2010.

Om Kap Sounion og monumenterne der. På min skole har vi et stort billede af Poseidontemplet på Kap Sounion. Min chef bad mig skrive en faktaboks -  og jeg gik vidst all in. Er ikke bevidst om at der er skrevet meget om Sounion på dansk, så bliver muligvis viderebearbejdet til en artikel.
Dette er IKKE peer-reviewed og jeg mangler at konsultere Barlettas omfattende publikation.

tiden. Søren Rasmussen. Gyldendal, 2018. 341 s. – ill. I farver. 232,50 kr./165 kr. som e-bog. A Østen for Solen – Rejser i tiden er en løst forbundet essaysamling, der søger svar på hvad 'civilisation' er. Målgruppen er den alment interesserede laeser, men har man et tema om kulturgeografi vil jeg mene, at adskillige af kapitlerne vil vaere velegnede til at reflektere over og tematisere i de aeldre klasser i folkeskolen og i gymnasiet. Søren Rasmussen, eventyrer og ejer af Albatros Travel, skriver for det mest faengende og underholdende i en i høj grad personlig bog. Bogen er hvad man kan kalde for en mands personlige geografi, og det gør den både let og svaer at kritisere. Der er masser af geografiske og historiske enkeltfejl og en manglende forståelse af brede koncepter som landbrugets opståen og evolution. Han henholder sig f.eks. til Herbert Spencers fortolkning af Darwins " survival of the fittest "-begreb, der udviklede sig til socialdarwinismen (s.106-108), og han misforstår hele grundlaget for evolutionsteorien s. 267 hvor han skriver: " Darwin konkluderede imidlertid, at gevir er kønsspecifikt hos langt de fleste hjortearter, og at dette forhold således må vaere familiens eller slaegtens grundform, hvorfra enkelte har udviklet en afvigende adfaerd. Undtagelsen bekraefter så at sige reglen, hvilket dog ikke er opfattelsen , når vi i dag taler om videnskabelige principper, hvor undtagelsen plejer at draebe en teori. En undtagelse fra evolutionsteorien vil dementere hele teorien ". Lidt senere foreslår han såmaend også et " kasseeftersyn " af selvsamme teori, da han begynder at spekulere over om Darwin nu også havde ret i det med seksuel selektion! Ligeledes får vi på s. 298-300 at vide at Japan var meget taet på at udvikle en atombombe, og at svenskerne foretog atomprøvespraengninger i 1960erne, alt sammen på grundlag af konspirationsteorier på internettet, og det lykkes ham også at påstå at Grønlands kultur er staerkt på retur (s. 338-39). Og minsandten om ikke Kilimanjaros opstod i forbindelse med neolitiseringens begyndelse (11700 f. Kr.) på trods af at vulkanen har vaeret død i i hvert fald 100000 år. Baseret på temmelig mange henvisninger til den kendte konservative historiker Niall Fergusons vaerk " Civilisation " gennem bogen er det ret åbenlyst hvor de ind i mellem meget gammeldags fortolkninger af begreberne 'civilisation', 'kultur' og 'evolution' kommer fra. Billedsiden er flot men virker alt for ofte meget lidt forbundet med teksten på den aktuelle side hvilket er temmelig forvirrende. Når bogen alligevel kan anbefales er det på grund af Søren Rasmussens egenart og fortaelleglaede, der som naevnt gør mange af kapitlerne yderst laesevaerdige, specielt Afrikaafsnittene, hvor det er helt tydeligt han ved mest og har den dybeste forståelse for f.eks. hadzaernes og masaiernes kultur; også de mange referencer til hans personlige liv og erfaringer fungerer godt. Så til fornøjelse og refleksion for den interesserede geografilaerer er bogen strålende, men biologilaereren i mig sprutter en hel del mere end geografen af arrigskab.

Anmeldelse af E. W. Sauer, " Archaeology and History. Breaking down the Boundaries " , Routledge, 2004. 206 s. $36,95. Der er en stigende tendens til diskussion omkring forholdet mellem arkaeologi og historie her i landet, som ellers laenge har haft en sporadisk karakter.