The Norwegian Institute at Athens / University of Bergen invites you to its upcoming lecture by Dr. Konrad Smiarowski (Researcher, Section for Cultural Heritage Management, University Museum of Bergen) and Dr. Morten Ramstad (Head of Section, Section for Cultural Heritage Management, University Museum of Bergen) on Thursday, 6 November 2025, at 7:00 p.m. (EET).
The lecture is titled “Rethinking the Neolithic Package: Monumentality, Mobility, and Maritime Economy at Selje, Western Norway”and will be held at the Norwegian Institute at Athens in a hybrid format, accommodating both in-person and online attendance via Zoom.
Registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance.
To attend in person, please register at [email protected]
To attend online, please register via the following link: https://uib.zoom.us/meeting/register/t5pTnWtPSU2DmUEJ_jTDtQ
Abstract
At the northwestern edge of Europe, the recently discovered Late Neolithic gallery grave at Selje (ca. 2100 BCE) marks the arrival of monumental burial traditions in Western Norway and offers the first window into the emergence of Neolithic communities in Norway. Excavated in 2023, the stone-built chamber, reused over generations, was surrounded by houses, middens, and rich faunal remains, revealing a community firmly rooted in maritime lifeways. Rather than a simple agricultural transition, the Selje material points to a hybrid, maritime Neolithic where surplus production, exchange, and social differentiation were anchored in the exploitation and redistribution of marine resources.
Combining archaeological, zooarchaeological, and forthcoming aDNA and Sr isotope analyses, this presentation situates Selje within the broader social transformations of the third millennium BCE in Europe. The evidence demonstrates that maritime intensification was integral to shaping Neolithic society at Europe’s northern periphery. The Selje evidence challenges us to reconsider the Neolithic package itself: in western Norway’s coastal landscapes, where maritime resources have shaped human life since the first postglacial pioneers, could the intensification of fishing and the development of marine technology have been among the main drivers of monumentality and social hierarchy, creating a distinct Norwegian trajectory within the wider Neolithic transformations of Europe?
Biographical Information
Konrad Smiarowski holds a researcher position at the University of Bergen Museum and is the manager for the Selje Project. He is an environmental archaeologist with specialization in zooarchaeology, who has been studying Human Ecodynamics of the North Atlantic Islands for the last 20 years. His doctoral thesis “Historical Ecology of Norse Greenland: Zooarchaeology and Climate Change Responses” reveals major changing maritime adaptations of settled farming communities in the Arctic. He is a Co-PI of “RESPONSE”, a NSF and UNESCO BRIDGES affiliated research grant “Co-Production of Knowledge and the Building of Local Archaeological Capacity in Greenland”. As part of his research, he also excavated and conducted projects in the United States, Canada, the Caribbean, Poland, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland and Norway.
Morten Ramstad is head of the Cultural Heritage Section at the University Museum of Bergen, Norway. Ramstad has extensive experience in archaeological research, cultural heritage management, and public engagement. His research focuses on prehistoric hunting and fishing, burial monuments, and climate impacts on cultural heritage in the North Atlantic region.