Hein B. Bjerck
Hein B. Bjerck is professor emeritus, lecturer/researcher in archaeology at the NTNU University museum (https://innsida.ntnu.no/user/vmarhbje/ansatt/min-profil).
In addition to ‘Contemporary Archaeology’, his main academic focus is 'Stone Age studies' - ranging from lithic traditions, phenomenological perspectives on cave paintings to international studies of early human-sea relation and colonization processes in seascapes. He is the leader of ‘Marine Ventures’ – a comparative study of marine foragers in the seascapes of Scandinavia and Argentinean Patagonia, and editor-in-chief of ‘MARINE VENTURES - Archaeological Perspectives on Human-Sea Relations’ (Equinox 2016). Marine Ventures: https://www.ntnu.no/vitenskapsmuseet/marine-ventures
His interests in the archaeology of the recent past departs from his time as Cultural Heritage Officer at the Governor of Svalbard in 1996-1999, where he was involved in managing modern ruins – derelict settlements, mining enterprises, base camps from scientific expeditions. The interest in material memory in small, intimate, and personal things was nourished along with art photographer Elin Andreassen and Bjørnar Olsen in the Pyramiden project that produced the book 'Persistent Memories – a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic' (Tapir Academic Press 2010).
2010 – 2013: Research fellow, Ruin Memories project (directed by Bjørnar Olsen). http://ruinmemories.org/
2015 – 2018: Research Fellow, ‘Object Matters: Archaeology and Heritage in the 21th Century’ (directed by Bjørnar Olsen). http://objectmatters.ruinmemories.org/
2016 – 2017: Research Fellow, ‘After Discourse: Things, Archaeology, and Heritage in the 21st Century’ (directed by Bjørnar Olsen) at Center of Advanced Studies in Oslo. https://cas.oslo.no/research-groups/after-discourse-things-archaeology-and-heritage-in-the-21st-century-article1802-827.html
Recent publications:
• ‘Archaeology at Home. Notes on Things, Life and Time’. Equinox, August 2022. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/archaeology-home/
• What could the ‘sea ice machine’ do to its people? On the lateglacial Doggerland, marine foraging, and the colonisation of Scandinavian seascapes. ‘Environmental Archaeology’ 2019.ǩ
• (with Elin Andreassen) Arrpleien i Regjeringskvartalet og VGs terrorskadde avispanel: Hendelsesvitne eller relikvie? In (A. Gjelsvik, ed.) ‘Bearbeidelser – 22. juli i ord og bilder’, 233-246. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 2020.
• Out of the day, time and life. A phenomenological approach to cavescapes and anthropomorphic paintings. In (Olsen, Burström, DeSilvey & Þóra Pétursdóttir, eds.) ‘After Discourse - Things, Affects, Ethics’. London: Routledge 2021.
Address: NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet,
7491 Trondheim,
Norway
In addition to ‘Contemporary Archaeology’, his main academic focus is 'Stone Age studies' - ranging from lithic traditions, phenomenological perspectives on cave paintings to international studies of early human-sea relation and colonization processes in seascapes. He is the leader of ‘Marine Ventures’ – a comparative study of marine foragers in the seascapes of Scandinavia and Argentinean Patagonia, and editor-in-chief of ‘MARINE VENTURES - Archaeological Perspectives on Human-Sea Relations’ (Equinox 2016). Marine Ventures: https://www.ntnu.no/vitenskapsmuseet/marine-ventures
His interests in the archaeology of the recent past departs from his time as Cultural Heritage Officer at the Governor of Svalbard in 1996-1999, where he was involved in managing modern ruins – derelict settlements, mining enterprises, base camps from scientific expeditions. The interest in material memory in small, intimate, and personal things was nourished along with art photographer Elin Andreassen and Bjørnar Olsen in the Pyramiden project that produced the book 'Persistent Memories – a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic' (Tapir Academic Press 2010).
2010 – 2013: Research fellow, Ruin Memories project (directed by Bjørnar Olsen). http://ruinmemories.org/
2015 – 2018: Research Fellow, ‘Object Matters: Archaeology and Heritage in the 21th Century’ (directed by Bjørnar Olsen). http://objectmatters.ruinmemories.org/
2016 – 2017: Research Fellow, ‘After Discourse: Things, Archaeology, and Heritage in the 21st Century’ (directed by Bjørnar Olsen) at Center of Advanced Studies in Oslo. https://cas.oslo.no/research-groups/after-discourse-things-archaeology-and-heritage-in-the-21st-century-article1802-827.html
Recent publications:
• ‘Archaeology at Home. Notes on Things, Life and Time’. Equinox, August 2022. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/archaeology-home/
• What could the ‘sea ice machine’ do to its people? On the lateglacial Doggerland, marine foraging, and the colonisation of Scandinavian seascapes. ‘Environmental Archaeology’ 2019.ǩ
• (with Elin Andreassen) Arrpleien i Regjeringskvartalet og VGs terrorskadde avispanel: Hendelsesvitne eller relikvie? In (A. Gjelsvik, ed.) ‘Bearbeidelser – 22. juli i ord og bilder’, 233-246. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget 2020.
• Out of the day, time and life. A phenomenological approach to cavescapes and anthropomorphic paintings. In (Olsen, Burström, DeSilvey & Þóra Pétursdóttir, eds.) ‘After Discourse - Things, Affects, Ethics’. London: Routledge 2021.
Address: NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet,
7491 Trondheim,
Norway
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Papers by Hein B. Bjerck
Under studieoppholdet i 2019 ble det gjort 3D opptak fra drone som en forberedelse til en omfattende laser scanning (ALS) vi arbeider med å finansiere. Det ble dessuten gravd en prøverute i Casa Grande Imiwaia, en spesielt omfangsrik skjellmødding (ca 600m2 i utstrekning, 1,5m tykk), som rommer en uvanlig stor hyttestruktur med gulvflate på rundt 80m2, i.e. mer enn fem ganger større enn de mange bolighyttene. Funnene styrket at dette var et sted utenfor hverdagen. Tydeligvis var dette en samlingsplass for mange der store mengder av skjell var konsumert. Dateringene var overraskende – størsteparten av skjellmøddingen ser ut til å vare fra en kort periode like før 6000 BP.
(References are combined in a large, common list for the whole volume.)
The confined size of the assemblages (~7-8 m2) are likely to represent occupations by small sized groups. The spatial consistency between early Holocene occupations and marine hunter-gatherer assemblages observed at a regional level suggests that groups with similar mobility and foraging strategies could have occupied the site.
Keywords: coastal site, early Holocene, early coastal foragers, lithic technology, spatial analysis.
His scholarly contribution ranges from Mesolithic to the Viking period. Fieldwork and information from recent excavations is pivotal in his publications – from his dissertation about the diabase quarry that supplied the production of stone adzes during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, the hunter-gatherer traditions and early farming during Neolithic times, to his studies of Viking Age courtyard sites, craft production sites and graves with smithing tools.
methods and equipment as terrestrial animals, 2) pinnipeds represented a similar resource as the terrestrial mega-fauna, with a familiar combination of meat, bone, skin, blood, sinews, and fat, and 3) the characteristics pinnipeds evoluted for a life in the water left them quite vulnerable on land. Their senses and locomotion are inferior to terrestrial animals—a weakness that human predators are always ready to exploit.
In this paper we will explore the nature of pinnipeds, their habitats and behavior, and discuss how pinnipeds might have related to and influenced the early development of marine foraging systems—technology, logistics, and settlement structure. The
timing, circumstances, cultural dynamics and species of pinnipeds involved in the Scandinavian and the Patagonian case differ. However, the two processes towards marine adaptation also have instructive parallels.
Nevertheless, this is also the moment to recall all the good things he meant to us. I have had the pleasure to meet Peter a number of times, and each time a new place … in Trondheim, where I met this fascinating and good-humoured Irishman that had so much interesting to tell back in 1986. In Bodø, then Cork, and soon after near Stockholm. Belfast, the big MESO conference in 2005. Minding the gap in Cork, 2006. The 2008 Vancouver Venture with Doug Price, and next year all the way to the Europe Price, his well-earned award from the Prehistoric Society and the venue in York. It turned out that I just missed him in Tierra del Fuego, but surely not in Santander and Belgrade. Where there are Mesolithic things in the ground, Peter have trodden the surface.
Peter was a traveling man. But not just a swift and shiny traveller on a one-way show-off tour to disseminate all the stuff he already knew. Peter also took his time. He stayed to study things, traditions, archaeologists, archives, landscapes, sites. Time to talk and to tell, but mostly to listen and learn … to draw lines, compare, combine, enhance, and falsify. Peter’s ability to combine solid knowledge with an open mind left a wake of love and respect wherever he travelled.
We are many that already miss his good-humoured comments and anecdotes, the sound of his hearty laughter, his mellow and pleasant voice. Even the male part of friends and colleagues will surely understand (and perhaps agree with) what a female student revealed to me in a pub in the midst of the big Belfast conference:
- I love the voice of Peter Woodman. I dream of marrying him. To sit in the corner of his arm, in the couch in front of the fire-place, listening to him reading Harry Potter for me.
I salute your memory, Peter, you made a difference to the Mesolithic community, the past, as well as the present.
In May 2015, after almost 70 years of service to the town, the Central Fire Station in Trondheim was abandoned. The fire and rescue service was relocated to a series of more modern stations circling the city center.
The process of abandonment opened the fire station for closer insights – as part of an art project. The fire station is a telling example of what Bruno Latour (1999) labels a “blackbox”, collectives of humans and things “made invisible by their own success”. Normally, it is the fire squad’s loud and flashing response to an emergency calls, firefighting and rescue operations that gets the attention. The fire station itself is a building among others in the town; a garage for the fire trucks, a place for firefighters between operations. The endoscopic journey in the station revealed a delicate, complex and highly targeted machinery of humans and things that circles around stealing time; moving seconds and minutes to where they are the most needed, where they make up the difference between life and death, fire and inferno. Down to the smallest details, this human-thing collective, is designed for readiness, speedy movement of personnel, myriads of well-maintained things carefully arranged for a rapid response to all kinds of misery that can happen to the town and its inhabitants.
The station is now rebuilt for new functions, an institution for contemporary art, a “house of literature” and an office complex. Important architectonical characteristics (façade, the marble staircase, Fire Chief’s office) are still part of the building, but all things that point to the imperative function of the fire station are removed, no rear mirrors to all material memories of the station’s long and faithful service for the town, and with it all other remains from past fire stations at the same spot. “Our present day world is made up of materials from the past” (Olivier 2004) – this also goes for visual arts and literature. The Trondheim Central Fire Station case advocates the need of broader and more reflexive, interdisciplinary and multivocal perspectives in the management of the cultural heritage of our recent past. “Archaeology – the discipline of things” (Olsen et al. 2012) have potential to make a difference.
Under studieoppholdet i 2019 ble det gjort 3D opptak fra drone som en forberedelse til en omfattende laser scanning (ALS) vi arbeider med å finansiere. Det ble dessuten gravd en prøverute i Casa Grande Imiwaia, en spesielt omfangsrik skjellmødding (ca 600m2 i utstrekning, 1,5m tykk), som rommer en uvanlig stor hyttestruktur med gulvflate på rundt 80m2, i.e. mer enn fem ganger større enn de mange bolighyttene. Funnene styrket at dette var et sted utenfor hverdagen. Tydeligvis var dette en samlingsplass for mange der store mengder av skjell var konsumert. Dateringene var overraskende – størsteparten av skjellmøddingen ser ut til å vare fra en kort periode like før 6000 BP.
(References are combined in a large, common list for the whole volume.)
The confined size of the assemblages (~7-8 m2) are likely to represent occupations by small sized groups. The spatial consistency between early Holocene occupations and marine hunter-gatherer assemblages observed at a regional level suggests that groups with similar mobility and foraging strategies could have occupied the site.
Keywords: coastal site, early Holocene, early coastal foragers, lithic technology, spatial analysis.
His scholarly contribution ranges from Mesolithic to the Viking period. Fieldwork and information from recent excavations is pivotal in his publications – from his dissertation about the diabase quarry that supplied the production of stone adzes during the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, the hunter-gatherer traditions and early farming during Neolithic times, to his studies of Viking Age courtyard sites, craft production sites and graves with smithing tools.
methods and equipment as terrestrial animals, 2) pinnipeds represented a similar resource as the terrestrial mega-fauna, with a familiar combination of meat, bone, skin, blood, sinews, and fat, and 3) the characteristics pinnipeds evoluted for a life in the water left them quite vulnerable on land. Their senses and locomotion are inferior to terrestrial animals—a weakness that human predators are always ready to exploit.
In this paper we will explore the nature of pinnipeds, their habitats and behavior, and discuss how pinnipeds might have related to and influenced the early development of marine foraging systems—technology, logistics, and settlement structure. The
timing, circumstances, cultural dynamics and species of pinnipeds involved in the Scandinavian and the Patagonian case differ. However, the two processes towards marine adaptation also have instructive parallels.
Nevertheless, this is also the moment to recall all the good things he meant to us. I have had the pleasure to meet Peter a number of times, and each time a new place … in Trondheim, where I met this fascinating and good-humoured Irishman that had so much interesting to tell back in 1986. In Bodø, then Cork, and soon after near Stockholm. Belfast, the big MESO conference in 2005. Minding the gap in Cork, 2006. The 2008 Vancouver Venture with Doug Price, and next year all the way to the Europe Price, his well-earned award from the Prehistoric Society and the venue in York. It turned out that I just missed him in Tierra del Fuego, but surely not in Santander and Belgrade. Where there are Mesolithic things in the ground, Peter have trodden the surface.
Peter was a traveling man. But not just a swift and shiny traveller on a one-way show-off tour to disseminate all the stuff he already knew. Peter also took his time. He stayed to study things, traditions, archaeologists, archives, landscapes, sites. Time to talk and to tell, but mostly to listen and learn … to draw lines, compare, combine, enhance, and falsify. Peter’s ability to combine solid knowledge with an open mind left a wake of love and respect wherever he travelled.
We are many that already miss his good-humoured comments and anecdotes, the sound of his hearty laughter, his mellow and pleasant voice. Even the male part of friends and colleagues will surely understand (and perhaps agree with) what a female student revealed to me in a pub in the midst of the big Belfast conference:
- I love the voice of Peter Woodman. I dream of marrying him. To sit in the corner of his arm, in the couch in front of the fire-place, listening to him reading Harry Potter for me.
I salute your memory, Peter, you made a difference to the Mesolithic community, the past, as well as the present.
In May 2015, after almost 70 years of service to the town, the Central Fire Station in Trondheim was abandoned. The fire and rescue service was relocated to a series of more modern stations circling the city center.
The process of abandonment opened the fire station for closer insights – as part of an art project. The fire station is a telling example of what Bruno Latour (1999) labels a “blackbox”, collectives of humans and things “made invisible by their own success”. Normally, it is the fire squad’s loud and flashing response to an emergency calls, firefighting and rescue operations that gets the attention. The fire station itself is a building among others in the town; a garage for the fire trucks, a place for firefighters between operations. The endoscopic journey in the station revealed a delicate, complex and highly targeted machinery of humans and things that circles around stealing time; moving seconds and minutes to where they are the most needed, where they make up the difference between life and death, fire and inferno. Down to the smallest details, this human-thing collective, is designed for readiness, speedy movement of personnel, myriads of well-maintained things carefully arranged for a rapid response to all kinds of misery that can happen to the town and its inhabitants.
The station is now rebuilt for new functions, an institution for contemporary art, a “house of literature” and an office complex. Important architectonical characteristics (façade, the marble staircase, Fire Chief’s office) are still part of the building, but all things that point to the imperative function of the fire station are removed, no rear mirrors to all material memories of the station’s long and faithful service for the town, and with it all other remains from past fire stations at the same spot. “Our present day world is made up of materials from the past” (Olivier 2004) – this also goes for visual arts and literature. The Trondheim Central Fire Station case advocates the need of broader and more reflexive, interdisciplinary and multivocal perspectives in the management of the cultural heritage of our recent past. “Archaeology – the discipline of things” (Olsen et al. 2012) have potential to make a difference.
Combining methods from contemporary and deep-time archaeology, and balancing scholarly archaeology with personal narrative, ‘Archaeology at Home’ presents three case studies of homes known intimately to him — the home of his father after his abrupt passing, the home of his uncle, which was lost in a fire, and a Stone Age home he excavated many years ago.
This evocative approach to archaeologies of memory will be appreciated by professional archaeologists, and by general readers who are drawn to the study of the past and the things that connect us to it.
“A majestic work, full of experiment and sensuous detail. Equally haunting, melancholic, and amusing: a narrative tour-de-force. Hein Bjerck writes with a unique voice, evoking place, people, and emotion with affect seldom, if ever, found in archaeological or historic text. Part love-letter to his father, uncle, and his own past, part meditation on objects, things, memory, humanity, relationships, and the passage of time, Archaeology at Home exceeds the boundaries of any one discipline. An instant classic.”
Professor Doug Bailey, Department of Anthropology, San Francisco State University
“A book that causes us to stop and think, to re-evaluate our practice and approach both collectively and individually, a book that challenges archaeologists to do what we do better. In a masterful blend of contemporary archaeology and early prehistory, Bjerck breathes life into the past and its fragments of humankind. ”
Marion Dowd, Lecturer in Prehistoric Archaeology, Institute of Technology Sligo
“In a unique and highly readable account, the author reveals what all archaeologists know but others may not – that archaeologists make the best story-tellers and that our stories will be contemporary and they can be deeply intimate. And aren’t those stories always the best?!”
Professor John Schofield, Archaeology, University of York, UK
Today the well-equipped Pyramiden survives as a conspicuous Soviet-era ghost town in pristine Arctic nature. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2006, this book explores what things left behind can tell us about how people lived and coped in this marginal town. It is also concerned with Pyramiden's post-human biography and the way the site provokes more general reflections on things, heritage and memory.
Challenging the traditional scholarly hierarchy of text over images, this book stands out by using art photography as a means to address these issues and to mediate the contemporary archaeology of Pyramiden.
This report is part of the Marine Ventures project, and describes field surveys in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina – The Cambaceres Surveys. This is a detailed survey of the settlements in a 4km2 large area in Cambaceres, located in the eastern part of the Beagle Channel, Argentinean Tierra del Fuego at the far south of South America. The survey mainly concentrated on shell midden formations, both larger and smaller, and the characteristic house pit formations where shell refuse is arranged in a protective “wall” around the dwelling. While previous surveys are mainly about larger settlements as a whole, our survey is more detailed, and encompasses individual GPS mapping of single structures. This gives the opportunity to see settlement structures more clearly and investigate how simple structures aggregate in larger settlements.
The survey includes 1251 structures, of which 804 are dwelling pits, 432 are shell midden domes, and 15 are other sites – ranging from around 7500 BP (uncal.) to the recent past. The Cambaceres Surveys also includes a targeted test pit survey aimed at locating older settlements without preserved organic material, defined as Early Coastal Forager (ECF) sites. The discovery of the large Binushmuka I settlement is an important result. At this site, two ECF lithic concentrations were discovered, dated to 7300–7500 BP. Details from excavations at Binushmuka is described in a separate report (Zangrando et al. in progress). The test pit survey also includes a number of other localities where ECF settlements could be expected, but with negative results.
For more details about the project, see the Marine Ventures website:
(https://www.ntnu.no/web/vitenskapsmuseet/marine-ventures)
Key words: settlements – shell middens and dwelling pits – marine foraging – survey methods – Tierra del Fuego – Yámana Indians
https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/marine-ventures/
The survey includes a total of 1251 structures, of which 804 are dwelling pits, 432 are shell midden domes, and 15 are other sites – ranging from around 7500 BP (uncal.) to the recent past. The Cambaceres Surveys also includes a targeted test pit survey aimed at locating older settlements without preserved organic material, defined as Early Coastal Forager (ECF) sites. The discovery of the large Binushmuka I settlement is an important result. At this site, two ECF lithic concentrations were discovered, dated to 7300–7500 BP. Details from excavations at Binushmuka is described in a separate report (Zangrando et al. in progress). The test pit survey also includes a number of other localities where ECF settlements could be expected, but with negative results.
For more details about the project, see the Marine Ventures website:
(https://www.ntnu.no/web/vitenskapsmuseet/marine-ventures)
"When does the past begin? Where does the "human" end and "nature" begin? These two questions form the basis of Hein Bjartmann Bjerck's book Archaeology At Home: Notes on Things, Life, and Time, in which he blends personal narrative and intimate contemporary archaeologies with reflections on the practice of archaeology in relation to more traditional temporalities. Books that have "Notes on…" in the title may reasonably be expected to ......"
(...)
At Home on the Waves is a book of interesting cases to illustrate the seemingly endless variability and nuances of human-sea relations that I do not hesitate to recommend, a bouquet of eye-opening reflections on the vast complexity of what the wet realm is in the world for terrestrial human beings