Sirkas : ett samiskt fångstsamhälle i förändring Kr.f.-1600 e.Kr

Sammanfattning: The dissertation is an investigation of Sirkas-sijdda, a Sámi hunting society in the interior of northern Sweden in the period AD 1-1600. The principal sources are historical evidence for the period around 1600, which saw the beginnings of colonial settlement and reindeer pastoralism, and for the earlier period archaeological data from excavations. These data come from dwellings, oven pits, cooking pits and food storage pits from over 100 settlement sites, and also hunting pits systems, sacrificial sites and graves. Over 120 radiocarbon dates help to establish the chronological framework.Sirkas-sijdda was a society organised around a type of hunting-fishing band that occupied a territory in the upper reaches of the Stora Luleälv river and lake system, between the Scandes mountains and the outlet of the lake Stora Lulevatten. The society numbered about 300 people at the beginning of the historical period, and they exploited mainly reindeer, elk, beaver, small game, and fish from the lakes and rivers.The data suggest the existence before AD 1 of a hunting society already organised to achieve an integrated seasonal use of boreal forest, lakes and foothills through mobility, specialisation and cooperation. Between AD 1-500 there was an intensification inland, based on winter settlements located by Stora Lulevatten and the development of reindeer hunting pit systems in the foothills. After 500 AD the systems of resource use stabilised to include the mountains as well as the foothills and forest zones. Winter base camps were still concentrated in the lower valley of Stora Lulevatten, but the summer camps were in the mountain zone. Information from excavations of stállo-sites occupied between 500-1500 AD allows models of the social organisation of Sámi hunting society to be tested. The presence of female artefacts suggests the use of these sites by task groups that included women as well as men. Field camps and spring and autumn transit camps can also be identified. All settlements are on reindeer migration routes or are located close to good fishing. An integrated use of the entire river valley can be inferred with an increasing specialisation on wild reindeer hunting. This period saw also the use of sacrificial sites where offerings of metal objects reached a peak in the late Iron Age and in early medieval time.Many of the social and economic changes inferred from the archaeological data arc consistent with a model of growing social complexity, settlement expansion and more closely defined territorial boundaries, all within the context of production for the fur trade. The expansion of Sirkas-sijdda territory to incorporate hunting pit systems in the mountains is seen as a particular symptom of a general process of specialisation and intensification. Evidence for more consumption of imported metal goods suggests increased wealth, which could have encouraged social differentiation. However, the society seems to have remained egalitarian up until late medieval time. Many trade goods had purely symbolic value as prestige items. It is suggested that ceremonies at sacrificial sites served to maintain social solidarity within the sijdda, while the offerings eliminated surplus wealth from the society and so helped to maintain its egalitarian character.The onset of pastoralism in the 16th century AD proved to be a more potent force for destabilising the sijdda system than a thousand years of engagement in exchange relationships through the fur trade. A new settlement pattern that is consistent with the demands of pastoralism does not fully develop until after AD 1600, at which point the social organisation of Sirkas hunting society becomes transformed.