Dwellings as population proxies? Identifying reuse of coastal Stone Age housepits in Arctic Norway by means of Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon dates

Abstract

Almost for a century, the archaeological record of the coastal Stone Age housepit sites in Arctic Norway has been at the centre of attention in many archaeological studies of this region. Although housepit reuse is occasionally recognised in particular cases, the theme does not get the proper attention it deserves. Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of radiocarbon samples have been dated, and the most recent excavations provide 14C-dates from single dwelling structures in quantities not formerly seen. Frequently, the radiocarbon determinations from one housepit prove to be widely spread in time, and hint towards the possibility of reuse. Here I contribute to the subject by outlining a formal method for analysing radiocarbon dates to detect episodes of housepit reuse, and by presenting the first estimation of the magnitude of the phenomena on a larger scale. Radiocarbon dates from three large-scale excavation projects, conducted between 1991 and 2010, are modelled following the Bayesian approach, and the chronological relationship between the dates is evaluated by statistical testing. The analysis reveals that housepit reuse is far more common than hitherto acknowledged, consequently each housepit can represent multiple household generations.