The Gressbakken House is a form of residential structure built during the Gressbakken phase of the Younger Stone Age (ca 5000-1800 cal BC) along the coastlines from the island of Sørøy in western Norway to the Kola Peninsula of Russia. Gressbakken dwellings were rectangular, semi-subterranean structures with at least two rectangular stone-lined hearths along the long axis. Houses were primarily constructed parallel to contemporary shorelines, with an entrance passage facing the water. Midden deposits were placed outside the entrance and/or at the rear of the dwelling.
The Gressbakken house form varies considerably in size, shape, subsurface depth, number of hearths and entrances and the amount of midden collected. Some of them were seasonal, others occupied year-round, and some varied from year to year. Recent work has included investigations into oral history of the Sami reindeer hunters and their use of Gressbakken dwellings.
People who lived in Gressbakken houses were maritime hunter-gatherers, who survived primarily on fish, sea mammals, birds, and reindeer.
Examples: Gressbakken, Nyelv Nedre Vest, other sites in the Varangerfjord region of Northeastern Norway.
Sources
This glossary entry is a part of the About.com guide to Ancient Houses, and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Engelstad E. 1985. The Late Stone Age of Arctic Norway: A Review. Arctic Archaeology 22(1):79-96.
Hodgetts L. 2010. Subsistence diversity in the Younger Stone Age landscape of Varangerfjord, northern Norway. Antiquity 84(323):41–54.
Hodgetts L, and Rahemtulla F. 2001. Land and sea: use of terrestrial mammal bones in coastal hunter-gatherer communities. Antiquity 75:56-62.
Renouf MAP. 1986. Excavations at a Younger Stone Age settlement in Varangerfjord, Norway. Polar Record 23(144):273-288.
Skandfer M. 2009. Ethics in the Landscape: Prehistoric Archaeology and Local Sámi Knowledge in Interior Finnmark, Northern Norway. Arctic Archaeology 46(1-2):89-102.
