(Press-News.org) The Viking hit-and-run raids on monastic communities such as Lindisfarne and Iona were the most infamous result of burgeoning Scandinavian maritime prowess in the closing years of the Eighth Century.
These skirmishes led to more expansive military campaigns, settlement, and ultimately conquest of large swathes of the British Isles. But Dr Steve Ashby, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, wanted to explore the social justifications for this spike in aggressive activity.
Previous research has considered environmental, demographic, technological and political drivers, as well as the palpable lure of silver and slave and why these forms of wealth became important at this stage.
Dr Ashby said: "I wanted to try to discover what would make a young chieftain invest in the time and resources for such a risky venture. And what were the motives of his crew?"
In research published in Archaeological Dialogues, Dr Ashby argues that focusing on the spoils of raiding is to ignore half the picture as the rewards of such voyages consisted of much more than portable wealth.
Dr Ashby says: "The lure of the exotic, of the world beyond the horizon, was an important factor. Classic anthropology has shown that the mystique of the exotic is a powerful force, and something that leaders and people of influence often use to prop up their power base. It is not difficult to see how this would have worked in the Viking Age."
The acquisition not just of silver but of distinctive forms of Anglo-Saxon, Frankish, and Celtic metalwork were tangible reminders of successful sorties, symbols of status and power, as well as calls-to-arms for future raids. Many of the large quantity of Christian artefacts found in Scandinavian contexts (particularly Norwegian pagan burials) escaped melting and recycling, not because of some form of artistic appreciation, but because they were foundation stones for power, and touchstones in any argument for undertaking military activity.
Dr Ashby says there was also a clear motive for joining raiding parties rather than blindly following their leaders. Raiding activity provided not only an opportunity for violence and the accumulation of wealth, but an arena in which individuals could be noticed by their peers and superiors. It was an opportunity to build reputations for skill, reliability, cunning, or courage. Just as leaders of raiding parties stood to gain more than portable wealth, so too their followers could seek intangible social capital from participation.
"The lure of the raid was thus more than booty; it was about winning and preserving power through the enchantment of travel and the doing of deeds. This provides an important correction to models that focus on the need for portable wealth; the act of acquiring silver was as important as the silver itself," Dr Ashby adds.
INFORMATION:
Home births lead to higher infant mortality than hospital births, at least for mothers living in poorer areas. This is the conclusion of a new study conducted by N. Meltem Daysal (University of Southern Denmark and IZA), Mircea Trandafir (University of Southern Denmark and IZA) and Reyn van Ewijk (VU University Amsterdam and University of Mainz) that examines 356,412 low-risk Dutch women who delivered between 2000 and 2008 and who were allowed to choose between a home and a hospital birth.
The safety of home births for low-risk women is a hotly debated topic in the Western ...
A 20-year study by James Cook University scientists has found a strong link between diabetes and tuberculosis in tropical Australia.
Despite massive improvements in sanitation and antibiotic coverage over the last century, TB still remains the leading bacterial cause of death worldwide.
Previous studies conducted in developing countries where TB is endemic have demonstrated the connection between the two diseases.
But the study by JCU and Townsville Hospital researchers, published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, has for the first time established ...
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine has demonstrated for the first time that hydrogen sulphide (H2S), when applied exogenously, could protect testicular germ cells, which are male reproductive cells, against heat-induced injury, which is one of the major causes of male infertility. The findings may provide a new approach to treating male infertility.
H2S, a colorless gas with the characteristic foul odour of rotten eggs, has been shown to produce anti-oxidant effects in various systems including the ...
Scientists uncover a port of liver entry for malaria parasites in a report published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. If these results hold up in humans, drugs that target this entry protein might help prevent the spread of disease.
Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium falciparum, which is transmitted to humans via mosquito bite. Recent efforts to limit parasite transmission and increase treatment coverage has reduced the number of malaria-related deaths, but the parasite still causes roughly 200 million new infections and half a million deaths worldwide ...
Considering
how many microorganisms we ingest each day, our gut has an extensive and well-developed immune system. This defense is involved in acute and chronic gut diseases, but it varies dramatically among people. A persistent question is how our genetic make-up affects our gut's ability to fight infections. EPFL scientists have found that gut immunity is not affected by single genes but by entire groups of genes. The study, which challenges simplistic views of gut disease, is published in Nature Communications.
That gut feeling
A healthy gut contains a multitude ...
Babies learn language best by interacting with people rather than passively through a video or audio recording. But it's been unclear what aspects of social interactions make them so important for learning.
New findings by researchers at the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) at the University of Washington demonstrate for the first time that an early social behavior called gaze shifting is linked to infants' ability to learn new language sounds.
Babies about 10 months old who engaged in more gaze shifting during sessions with a foreign language tutor ...
Located in the South Atlantic, thousands of kilometers away from the nearest populated country, Tristan da Cunha is one of the remotest inhabited islands on earth. Together with the uninhabited neighboring island of Gough about 400 kilometers away, it is part of the British Overseas Territories. Both islands are active volcanoes, derived from the same volcanic hotspot. A team of marine scientists and volcanologists from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, from the University of Kiel and the University of London discovered that about 70 million years ago, ...
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a very aggressive form of pulmonary fibrosis and has a particularly poor prognosis. This fatal disease, for which so far no causal therapies exist, is characterized by a massive deposition of connective and scar tissue in the lung, which leads to a progressive loss of lung function and ultimately death. Connective tissue is mainly produced by myofibroblasts. The research group led by PD Dr. Silke Meiners of the Institute of Lung Biology and the CPC showed now for the first time that the activation of these myofibroblasts depends on increased ...
Doctors and researchers have long known that children who are missing about 60 genes on a certain chromosome are at a significantly elevated risk for developing either a disorder on the autism spectrum or psychosis -- that is, any mental disorder characterized by delusions and hallucinations, including schizophrenia. But there has been no way to predict which child with the abnormality might be at risk for which disorder.
New findings by researchers at UCLA and the University of Pittsburgh are the first to suggest a potential way to make that determination. In a study ...
Low-dose lithium reduced involuntary motor movements - the troubling side effect of the medication most commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease (PD) - in a mouse model of the condition that is diagnosed in about 60,000 Americans each year. The third in a series of studies from the Andersen lab involving PD and low-dose lithium, the results add to mounting evidence that low-doses of the psychotropic drug could benefit patients suffering from the incurable, degenerative condition.
This study, published online in Brain Research, involved Parkinsonian mice that were given ...
