Stone Age rockshelters in the high mountains

Abstract

In 2016, the University of Bergen conducted an archaeological field school at Hallingskeid in the high-mountains in Ulvik County, western Norway. One of the sites investigated was a bouldershelter with a cultural layer that showed periodical activity from the Late Mesolithic, the Neolithic, and the Bronze Age. At the time, this was the first boulder-shelter to be investigated in these mountain areas since the 1970s and provided valuable insight into the chronological depth of the activity at these permanent shelters. This raised the question whether this site was an anomaly or if these types of settlement structures were equally ‘important’ also before the transition to farming? Permanent shelters have received less focus as research subject the last 40 yerars, especially in the high mountains. A larger study of the Hardangervidda and Nordfjella mountain areas show a considerable use of these habitation structures at least from the Late Mesolithic and on. This paper aims to look at rockshelters and boulder-shelters in a longer perspective with a focus on their use before and after the Middle-Late Neolithic (MN-LN) transition to farming c. 2350 BC to discuss their importance among hunter-fisher-gatherer communities in South Norway.