Papers/Articles/Posters by Mette Langbroek
Beads and beadmaking in the early medieval settlement of Oegstgeest, 2021
In the early medieval period, beads were available abundantly:
hundreds of thousands of decorativ... more In the early medieval period, beads were available abundantly:
hundreds of thousands of decorative beads have been deposited
in mostly female inhumation graves across Europe dating
between AD 400-750. Whereas beads are found regularly in
Merovingian cemeteries, they have been excavated less often in
settlements. During the excavation of the early medieval settlement
at Oegstgeest, 113 beads made of glass, amber, rock crystal
and faience were found, distributed over 31 features. Seventythree
of these beads were found in a grave on the edge of the settlement;
the rest of the beads were found in other features scattered
across the settlement. Thanks to the extensive sieving campaign
that was organised on site, more beads have been found than on a
‘regular’ early medieval settlement excavation.
Besides the 113 lost, deposited or discarded beads, the sieving
campaign also yielded overwhelming evidence for the production
of amber beads. In total 781 pieces of amber bead-making
waste were found distributed over 34 features in the settlement.6
This is by far the most amber-working evidence ever excavated
on a Merovingian site in the Netherlands: other sites that have
produced amber-bead making evidence are Utrecht-Leidsche Rijn
(nine pieces of amber-working debris) and Wijnaldum (eleven
pieces of amber-working debris).
In this chapter, the beads and bead-making evidence found
in the early medieval settlement of Oegstgeest, the exchange
connections that the beads represent and the meaning of beads in
Merovingian society will be discussed.
Langbroek & Willemsen, 2020
De kralen uit Dorestad zijn belangrijk, omdat deze grotendeels dateren uit de Karolingische perio... more De kralen uit Dorestad zijn belangrijk, omdat deze grotendeels dateren uit de Karolingische periode. In Nederland en ook in de buurlanden zijn uit de vroege middeleeuwen vooral grote hoeveelheden Merovingische kralen teruggevonden, uit de vijfde tot en met de zevende eeuw na Christus, die als snoeren waren meegegeven in graven van vrouwen en kinderen. In Scandinavië zijn juist veel kralen uit de Vikingperiode bekend, eveneens als grafgift, maar ook als productieafval. Het merendeel van
de kralen uit Dorestad stamt uit de achtste en de vroege negende eeuw en valt dus precies daar tussenin. Kralen uit deze eeuwen zijn zeldzaam in Nederland, deels omdat er in deze christelijke periode nauwelijks nog grafgiften werden meegegeven, wat eerder en elders de belangrijkste vondstcontext was voor kralen. Dat maakt dat de kralen van Dorestad moeilijk te vergelijken zijn, en daardoor moeilijk te onderzoeken, maar natuurlijk ook dat zij zelf een corpus vormen dat als vergelijkingsmateriaal voor
vondsten uit deze periode elders in Nederland kan dienen.
Langbroek in MADOC, 2018
In het gebied dat nu de huidige Benelux is worden in vrouwengraven uit de
Merovingische periode (... more In het gebied dat nu de huidige Benelux is worden in vrouwengraven uit de
Merovingische periode (450-750) veel kralensets gevonden. De samenstelling
van deze ensembles is gevarieerd: de meeste kralen zijn gemaakt van verschillende
kleuren glaspasta, maar ook kralen van barnsteen, amethist, bergkristal
en meerschuim komen regelmatig voor. Veel van deze kralen werden niet lokaal
vervaardigd, maar vonden hun oorsprong in India, het oostelijke Middellandse
Zeegebied of het Baltische gebied. Omdat kralen waarschijnlijk ‘meereisden’
met andere uitwisselingsproducten biedt de studie van deze bijzondere vondstcategorie
een geweldig potentieel om de uitwisseling van goederen in de Merovingische
periode te bestuderen en daarmee de vroegmiddeleeuwse economie
beter te begrijpen.
Langbroek, 2021
During most campaigns at Dorestad, a significant number of beads were excavated. In contrast to b... more During most campaigns at Dorestad, a significant number of beads were excavated. In contrast to beads from Scandinavian emporia such as Ribe, the beads from Dorestad have never been studied as a complete set. Several small bead assemblages from different excavation locations in Wijk bij Duurstede have been briefly published in excavation reports , but a closer look at these beads was necessary, focusing on their use, deposition and provenance. As the publications of beads found in Scandinavian emporia show , their study can contribute significantly to our understanding of the international networks Dorestad was part of.
Throughout the Early Middle Ages, beads occur very regularly in north-western Europe. In cemeteries dating to the Merovingian period colourful strings of beads were deposited in graves on a regular basis. This deposition pattern changed in the second half of the seventh century: beads were excavated from only a handful of cemeteries dating to the late seventh and eighth centuries in the Netherlands. These rare bead sets have not been intensively studied at all, which has resulted in a lack of knowledge of Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads. This lack of bead studies in north-western Europe stands in sharp contrast to bead research in Scandinavia, where (pre) Viking-Age beads have received a lot of attention during the past decades. Some researchers of Scandinavian bead material have suggested that Scandinavians had few opportunities to obtain beads from the West, as they believe the use of beads had largely fallen out of fashion in north-western Europe. The study of the beads from Dorestad thus presents an opportunity to create a basic corpus for beads from the late seventh, eighth and early ninth century in the Netherlands, and can indicate whether bead-networks between the west and Scandinavia had indeed come to a stand-still.
In this article, 395 beads found during the Dorestad excavations will be discussed. These are the Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads from twentieth- and twentyfirst-century excavations of the settlement sites at Hoogstraat, De Heul, Voorwijk, Veilingterrein, De Horden, Zandweg and Albert Heijn, and the cemeteries on De Heul and Willigenburg, plus some beads from nineteenth century excavations of which the find location remains vague. They are all kept in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Several more beads from nineteenth-century excavations are present in the PUG collection, but the largest “chunk” is definitely presented in this article. Hopefully the author will have the opportunity to study the remaining beads in the future. Due to a lack of sieving activities during the Dorestad excavations far into the nineteen-nineties, many more beads must have been missed. With this article comes a catalogue with a description per bead and a set of colour plates on which each bead from Dorestad is depicted.
This article demonstrates that early medieval exchange networks can be studied through the resear... more This article demonstrates that early medieval exchange networks can be studied through the research of Merovingian beads. Hundred-thousands of beads have been deposited in inhumation graves of the period 400-750 AD across Europe. They have the potential to offer a goldmine of new insights into early medieval exchange, which has hardly been exploited. This potential is demonstrated by focussing on amber beads, which make up almost 10 percent of the total Merovingian bead assemblage.
INTER-SECTION (https://www.inter-section.nl) is an open-access journal that provides a platform fo... more INTER-SECTION (https://www.inter-section.nl) is an open-access journal that provides a platform for research carried out by students of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University. This initiative is the result of an interactive discussion raised during the two-day symposium ‘Archaeology in Transition’, celebrating the opening of the 'van Steenis Building' in September 2014. The group of internationally renowned speakers was interested to find out the reasons why only very little students publish the research they perform during their studies, while there is increasingly expected more from recently graduated students. In discussing the potential reasons for this, students proclaimed insecurity on the relevance of their work to a broader archaeological field, as well as mere inexperience and unfamiliarity with the process of publication to be the source of their hesitance. The potential for a low-profile platform, aimed at the promotion and stimulation of the publication of undergraduate and graduate student research, became apparent. Whilst most students produce over 100,000 words during the first years of their academic career, the majority of this work is only read by a handful of people. Acknowledging the fact that these studies have huge potential by providing 'fresh' contributions to the field of archaeology, a group of 4 (former) Leiden students took the initiative to create a platform for publishing such work. The result of this initiative is INTER-SECTION, an accessible and stimulating peer-reviewed platform aimed to bridge the gap between schooling and research by promoting and facilitating the publication of innovative studies conducted by archaeologists at the brink of their scientific career.
Papers by Mette Langbroek
Review of: Knight, M. G., Boughton, D. & Wilkinson, R. E. (eds) (2019). Objects of the past in th... more Review of: Knight, M. G., Boughton, D. & Wilkinson, R. E. (eds) (2019). Objects of the past in the past. Investigating the significance of earlier artefacts in later contexts. Oxford: Archaeopress. Softcover, 196 pages with 77 figs and 11 tables. ISBN 978-1789692-48-8, resp. 978-1789692-49-5 (eBook)
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Papers/Articles/Posters by Mette Langbroek
hundreds of thousands of decorative beads have been deposited
in mostly female inhumation graves across Europe dating
between AD 400-750. Whereas beads are found regularly in
Merovingian cemeteries, they have been excavated less often in
settlements. During the excavation of the early medieval settlement
at Oegstgeest, 113 beads made of glass, amber, rock crystal
and faience were found, distributed over 31 features. Seventythree
of these beads were found in a grave on the edge of the settlement;
the rest of the beads were found in other features scattered
across the settlement. Thanks to the extensive sieving campaign
that was organised on site, more beads have been found than on a
‘regular’ early medieval settlement excavation.
Besides the 113 lost, deposited or discarded beads, the sieving
campaign also yielded overwhelming evidence for the production
of amber beads. In total 781 pieces of amber bead-making
waste were found distributed over 34 features in the settlement.6
This is by far the most amber-working evidence ever excavated
on a Merovingian site in the Netherlands: other sites that have
produced amber-bead making evidence are Utrecht-Leidsche Rijn
(nine pieces of amber-working debris) and Wijnaldum (eleven
pieces of amber-working debris).
In this chapter, the beads and bead-making evidence found
in the early medieval settlement of Oegstgeest, the exchange
connections that the beads represent and the meaning of beads in
Merovingian society will be discussed.
de kralen uit Dorestad stamt uit de achtste en de vroege negende eeuw en valt dus precies daar tussenin. Kralen uit deze eeuwen zijn zeldzaam in Nederland, deels omdat er in deze christelijke periode nauwelijks nog grafgiften werden meegegeven, wat eerder en elders de belangrijkste vondstcontext was voor kralen. Dat maakt dat de kralen van Dorestad moeilijk te vergelijken zijn, en daardoor moeilijk te onderzoeken, maar natuurlijk ook dat zij zelf een corpus vormen dat als vergelijkingsmateriaal voor
vondsten uit deze periode elders in Nederland kan dienen.
Merovingische periode (450-750) veel kralensets gevonden. De samenstelling
van deze ensembles is gevarieerd: de meeste kralen zijn gemaakt van verschillende
kleuren glaspasta, maar ook kralen van barnsteen, amethist, bergkristal
en meerschuim komen regelmatig voor. Veel van deze kralen werden niet lokaal
vervaardigd, maar vonden hun oorsprong in India, het oostelijke Middellandse
Zeegebied of het Baltische gebied. Omdat kralen waarschijnlijk ‘meereisden’
met andere uitwisselingsproducten biedt de studie van deze bijzondere vondstcategorie
een geweldig potentieel om de uitwisseling van goederen in de Merovingische
periode te bestuderen en daarmee de vroegmiddeleeuwse economie
beter te begrijpen.
Throughout the Early Middle Ages, beads occur very regularly in north-western Europe. In cemeteries dating to the Merovingian period colourful strings of beads were deposited in graves on a regular basis. This deposition pattern changed in the second half of the seventh century: beads were excavated from only a handful of cemeteries dating to the late seventh and eighth centuries in the Netherlands. These rare bead sets have not been intensively studied at all, which has resulted in a lack of knowledge of Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads. This lack of bead studies in north-western Europe stands in sharp contrast to bead research in Scandinavia, where (pre) Viking-Age beads have received a lot of attention during the past decades. Some researchers of Scandinavian bead material have suggested that Scandinavians had few opportunities to obtain beads from the West, as they believe the use of beads had largely fallen out of fashion in north-western Europe. The study of the beads from Dorestad thus presents an opportunity to create a basic corpus for beads from the late seventh, eighth and early ninth century in the Netherlands, and can indicate whether bead-networks between the west and Scandinavia had indeed come to a stand-still.
In this article, 395 beads found during the Dorestad excavations will be discussed. These are the Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads from twentieth- and twentyfirst-century excavations of the settlement sites at Hoogstraat, De Heul, Voorwijk, Veilingterrein, De Horden, Zandweg and Albert Heijn, and the cemeteries on De Heul and Willigenburg, plus some beads from nineteenth century excavations of which the find location remains vague. They are all kept in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Several more beads from nineteenth-century excavations are present in the PUG collection, but the largest “chunk” is definitely presented in this article. Hopefully the author will have the opportunity to study the remaining beads in the future. Due to a lack of sieving activities during the Dorestad excavations far into the nineteen-nineties, many more beads must have been missed. With this article comes a catalogue with a description per bead and a set of colour plates on which each bead from Dorestad is depicted.
Papers by Mette Langbroek
hundreds of thousands of decorative beads have been deposited
in mostly female inhumation graves across Europe dating
between AD 400-750. Whereas beads are found regularly in
Merovingian cemeteries, they have been excavated less often in
settlements. During the excavation of the early medieval settlement
at Oegstgeest, 113 beads made of glass, amber, rock crystal
and faience were found, distributed over 31 features. Seventythree
of these beads were found in a grave on the edge of the settlement;
the rest of the beads were found in other features scattered
across the settlement. Thanks to the extensive sieving campaign
that was organised on site, more beads have been found than on a
‘regular’ early medieval settlement excavation.
Besides the 113 lost, deposited or discarded beads, the sieving
campaign also yielded overwhelming evidence for the production
of amber beads. In total 781 pieces of amber bead-making
waste were found distributed over 34 features in the settlement.6
This is by far the most amber-working evidence ever excavated
on a Merovingian site in the Netherlands: other sites that have
produced amber-bead making evidence are Utrecht-Leidsche Rijn
(nine pieces of amber-working debris) and Wijnaldum (eleven
pieces of amber-working debris).
In this chapter, the beads and bead-making evidence found
in the early medieval settlement of Oegstgeest, the exchange
connections that the beads represent and the meaning of beads in
Merovingian society will be discussed.
de kralen uit Dorestad stamt uit de achtste en de vroege negende eeuw en valt dus precies daar tussenin. Kralen uit deze eeuwen zijn zeldzaam in Nederland, deels omdat er in deze christelijke periode nauwelijks nog grafgiften werden meegegeven, wat eerder en elders de belangrijkste vondstcontext was voor kralen. Dat maakt dat de kralen van Dorestad moeilijk te vergelijken zijn, en daardoor moeilijk te onderzoeken, maar natuurlijk ook dat zij zelf een corpus vormen dat als vergelijkingsmateriaal voor
vondsten uit deze periode elders in Nederland kan dienen.
Merovingische periode (450-750) veel kralensets gevonden. De samenstelling
van deze ensembles is gevarieerd: de meeste kralen zijn gemaakt van verschillende
kleuren glaspasta, maar ook kralen van barnsteen, amethist, bergkristal
en meerschuim komen regelmatig voor. Veel van deze kralen werden niet lokaal
vervaardigd, maar vonden hun oorsprong in India, het oostelijke Middellandse
Zeegebied of het Baltische gebied. Omdat kralen waarschijnlijk ‘meereisden’
met andere uitwisselingsproducten biedt de studie van deze bijzondere vondstcategorie
een geweldig potentieel om de uitwisseling van goederen in de Merovingische
periode te bestuderen en daarmee de vroegmiddeleeuwse economie
beter te begrijpen.
Throughout the Early Middle Ages, beads occur very regularly in north-western Europe. In cemeteries dating to the Merovingian period colourful strings of beads were deposited in graves on a regular basis. This deposition pattern changed in the second half of the seventh century: beads were excavated from only a handful of cemeteries dating to the late seventh and eighth centuries in the Netherlands. These rare bead sets have not been intensively studied at all, which has resulted in a lack of knowledge of Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads. This lack of bead studies in north-western Europe stands in sharp contrast to bead research in Scandinavia, where (pre) Viking-Age beads have received a lot of attention during the past decades. Some researchers of Scandinavian bead material have suggested that Scandinavians had few opportunities to obtain beads from the West, as they believe the use of beads had largely fallen out of fashion in north-western Europe. The study of the beads from Dorestad thus presents an opportunity to create a basic corpus for beads from the late seventh, eighth and early ninth century in the Netherlands, and can indicate whether bead-networks between the west and Scandinavia had indeed come to a stand-still.
In this article, 395 beads found during the Dorestad excavations will be discussed. These are the Late Merovingian and Carolingian beads from twentieth- and twentyfirst-century excavations of the settlement sites at Hoogstraat, De Heul, Voorwijk, Veilingterrein, De Horden, Zandweg and Albert Heijn, and the cemeteries on De Heul and Willigenburg, plus some beads from nineteenth century excavations of which the find location remains vague. They are all kept in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden. Several more beads from nineteenth-century excavations are present in the PUG collection, but the largest “chunk” is definitely presented in this article. Hopefully the author will have the opportunity to study the remaining beads in the future. Due to a lack of sieving activities during the Dorestad excavations far into the nineteen-nineties, many more beads must have been missed. With this article comes a catalogue with a description per bead and a set of colour plates on which each bead from Dorestad is depicted.