The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory and progressing to protohistory. In this usage, it is preceded by the Stone Age and Bronze Age. These concepts originated for describing Iron Age Europe and the Ancient Near East. In the Archaeology of the Americas, a five-period system is conventionally used instead; indigenous cultures there did not develop an iron smelting economy in the Pre-Columbian era, though some did work copper, bronze, unsmelted iron, and iron from East Asian shipwrecks. Indigenous metalworking arrived in Australia with European contact.
Lejre is a railway town in the northwestern part of the island of Zealand in eastern Denmark. It has a population of 3,165 inhabitants.
Experimental archaeology is a field of study which attempts to generate and test archaeological hypotheses, usually by replicating or approximating the feasibility of ancient cultures performing various tasks or feats. It employs a number of methods, techniques, analyses, and approaches, based upon archaeological source material such as ancient structures or artifacts.
The Danes were a North Germanic tribe inhabiting southern Scandinavia, including the area now comprising Denmark proper, northern and eastern England, and the Scanian provinces of modern-day southern Sweden, during the Nordic Iron Age and the Viking Age. They founded what became the Kingdom of Denmark. The name of their realm is believed to mean "Danish March", viz. "the march of the Danes", in Old Norse, referring to their southern border zone between the Eider and Schlei rivers, known as the Danevirke.
Maglemosian is the name given to a culture of the early Mesolithic period in Northern Europe. In Scandinavia, the culture was succeeded by the Kongemose culture.
The Nordic Bronze Age is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC.
Butser Ancient Farm is an archaeological open-air museum and experimental archaeology site located near Petersfield in Hampshire, southern England. Butser features experimental reconstructions of prehistoric, Romano-British and Anglo-Saxon buildings. Examples of Neolithic dwellings, Iron Age roundhouses, a Romano-British villa and an early Saxon house are on display. The site is used as both a tourist attraction and a site for the undertaking of experimental archaeology. In this latter capacity, it was designed so that archaeologists could learn more about the agricultural and domestic economy in Britain during the millennium that lasted from circa 400 BCE to 400 CE, in what was the Late British Iron Age and Romano-British periods.
The Nordic Stone Age refers to the Stone Age of Scandinavia. During the Weichselian glaciation, almost all of Scandinavia was buried beneath a thick permanent ice cover, thus, the Stone Age came rather late to this region. As the climate slowly warmed up by the end of the ice age, nomadic hunters from central Europe sporadically visited the region. However, it was not until around 12,000 BCE that permanent, but nomadic, habitation in the region took root.
The Hjortspring boat is a vessel designed as a large canoe, from the Scandinavian Pre-Roman Iron Age. It was built circa 400–300 BC. The hull and remains were rediscovered and excavated in 1921–1922 from the bog of Hjortspring Mose on the island of Als in Sønderjylland, southern Denmark. The boat is the oldest find of a wooden plank ship in Scandinavia and it closely resembles the thousands of petroglyph images of Nordic Bronze Age ships found throughout Scandinavia. The vessel is a planked wooden boat of more than 19 metres length overall, 13.6 metres long inside, and 2 metres wide. The planking is joined by sewing, using a bevelled lap joint similar to clinker construction. Ten thwarts that could have served as seats, span the boat with room for two persons each; this suggests space for a crew of at least 20 who propelled the boat with paddles. The boat would have weighed an estimated 530 kilograms, making it easily portable by its crew.
The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde is Denmark's national ship museum for ships of the prehistoric and medieval period.
The archaeology of Northern Europe studies the prehistory of Scandinavia and the adjacent North European Plain, roughly corresponding to the territories of modern Sweden, Norway, Denmark, northern Germany, Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium.
Eketorp is an Iron Age fort, located in southeastern Öland, Sweden, and extensively reconstructed and enlarged in the Middle Ages. Throughout the ages the fortification has served a variety of somewhat differing uses: from defensive ringfort, to medieval safe haven and thence a cavalry garrison. In the 20th century it was further reconstructed to become a heavily visited tourist site and a location for re-enactment of medieval battles. Eketorp is the only one of the 19 known prehistoric fortifications on Öland that has been completely excavated, yielding a total of over 24,000 individual artifacts. The entirety of southern Öland has been designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The Eketorp fortification is often referred to as Eketorp Castle.
Ferrous metallurgy is the metallurgy of iron and its alloys. The earliest surviving prehistoric iron artifacts, from the 4th millennium BC in Egypt, were made from meteoritic iron-nickel. It is not known when or where the smelting of iron from ores began, but by the end of the 2nd millennium BC iron was being produced from iron ores in the region from Greece to India, The use of wrought iron was known by the 1st millennium BC, and its spread defined the Iron Age. During the medieval period, smiths in Europe found a way of producing wrought iron from cast iron, in this context known as pig iron, using finery forges. All these processes required charcoal as fuel.
Middelaldercentret is an experimental living history archaeological open-air museum in Denmark, which depicts the Middle Ages in the Denmark of the late 14th and early 15th centuries. It is located in Sundby Lolland, some 4 km northwest of the centre of Nykøbing Falster on the waterfront of Guldborgsund.
Errett Callahan was an American archaeologist, flintknapper, and pioneer in the fields of experimental archaeology and lithic replication studies.
Iron Age Scandinavia was the Iron Age, as it unfolded in Scandinavia. It was preceded by the Nordic Bronze Age.
Mining archaeology is a specific field well-developed in the British Isles during recent decades. A reason of ongoing interest in this field is the particular bond between regional history and the exploitation of metals. References to mines in the area exist in Strabo's works. However the first accomplished study on the topic was attempted by Oliver Davies in 1935. Other momentous researches were that of geologist John S. Jackson about mines in Ireland and Lewis, Jones in Dolaucothi goldmine in Wales, and the pioneering work of Ronald F. Tylecote. Moreover, in the 1980s and 1990s a new generation of amateurs and scientists began investigations in different locations in the British Isles, including Duncan James on the Great Orme's Head, Simon Timberlake with the Early Mines Research Group at sites in Wales and William O'Brien in Ireland.
Experimental archaeometallurgy is a subset of experimental archaeology that specifically involves past metallurgical processes most commonly involving the replication of copper and iron objects as well as testing the methodology behind the production of ancient metals and metal objects. Metals and elements used primarily as alloying materials, such as tin, lead, and arsenic, are also a part of experimental research.
The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.
Gevninge is a small town, with a population of 1,646, in Lejre Municipality on the island of Zealand in Denmark. Its old section is located alongside a small river, Lejre Å, approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from its mouth at Roskilde Fjord.
