Norra Spånga : bebyggelse och samhälle under järnåldern

Sammanfattning: This thesis is mainly based on funerals and deals with the structure during the Iron Age in northern Spånga in the south of Uppland, Sweden. The investigation area is about 3x7 kilometres large and is situated about 12 kilometres from the centre of Stockholm. Geographically it is part of two river-valleys. During most of the Iron Age these were connected with the Baltic and were important ways of transport and communication. The landscape is typical for the Mälar-region. Between 1964 and 1976 the City Museum of Stockholm excavated about 1000 graves and 10 settlement and this is probably the most extensive excavations ever done in Sweden within such a limited area. Among Swedish settlement archaeologists the general opinion during the last decades has been that throughout the Iron Age the rural settlements in the Mälar-region consisted of single farmsteads. Each farm had a population of 6 to 8 persons including children. The existence of settlement units with several large Iron Age burial grounds and a number of registred graves above the average had been observed for a long time though and explained in different ways. But it has been considered unlikely that thcese units had a settlement structure different from the single farms. In northern Spånga Arvinge was such a settlement with three Iron Age cemeteries each with more than 50 registred graves. All registred and a great number of unknown, ancient monuments were excavated here. This unit has therefore been given the greatest importance in this thesis which tries to prove that Ärvinge during the Early Iron Age had a settlement consisting ot two oi three farmsteads geographically spread within its territory and at the beginning of the Late Iron Age, probably around 5-600 A.D., theese farms moved in on the place where Arvinge still is situated. From the archaeological evidence it has not been possible to decide whether Ärvinge during the Late Iron Age also was a real village with common ownership of the arable land. Subsequently Ärvinge also had an average population consisting of about 20 persons during the Iron Age. There also existed single farms in northern Spånga and they were perhaps the most common settlement structure here during the Late Iron Age. The settlement units of northern Spånga show different physical and chronological structures. An attempt has been made to divide them into three groups: primary units, early secondary units and late secondary units. The first mentioned have more than one farm on its territory the others are basically single farms. Socially the primary units with several farms within their territory probably ranked higher than the single farms. First it is natural to believe that farmers with more extensive lands had a better social status than those on small farms. Secondly this is also indicated by the fact that the primary units had more richly equipped graves.