Gårdsstrukturer i Halland under bronsålder och äldre järnålder Farm Structures in Halland in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age

Sammanfattning: The dissertation Gårdsstrukturer i Halland under bronsålder och äldre järnålder consists of two separate parts. One is the licentiate thesis På gården from 1999 while the other is a supplementary part entitled Boningshusets rumsbildningar. Together they make up a doctoral dissertation dealing with settlement site material from Halland in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. In På gården there is a discussion of ten Halland settlement sites from the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age. Unfortunately, there were at that time no more well documented settlement sites with traces of distinct house remains. The text should therefore not be viewed as a total survey of remains of settlement sites from the Bronze Age or Early Iron Age in Halland, but rather as an account of a selection of habitation areas with visible farm structures where it has been possible to document the houses making up a household. The study originates from the observations made in connection with the excavation of the settlement site Sannarp, RAÄ 3, in Årstad Parish. Both at this excavation and at the settlement sites used for comparison it was observed that the people lived on the same site for a long time and that different kinds of activities seem to have been performed within demarcated areas. What could be noted over and above this was that several of the houses on the sites show a building tradition typical of each settlement site, which was visible in the construction of the walls. The second part of the dissertation, Boningshusets rumsbildningar, is a direct continuation of På gården. Here, however, the study mainly concerns how households in Halland in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age organized their spaces inside the dwelling house. The study focuses chiefly on room division, where the different rooms were located, and their size. To obtain a wider perspective there is also a comparison with a limited selection of other contemporary dwelling houses in Scandinavia. In addition there is a study of the size of dwelling rooms in the later part of the Iron Age, the Middle Ages, and historical times. This shows that houses in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age usually had three rooms. In the later part of the Roman Iron Age it became common to have more rooms. The dwelling room was normally reached through a centrally placed door, often via an entrance room with two opposing doors. There were other rooms for storage and perhaps for stabling animals. The dwelling room was mostly in the middle of the house. An interesting observation is that both utility sections and dwelling rooms were of similar size in small and large houses alike.