Arrangement of space inside Ölandic ringforts. A comparative study of the spatial division within the ringforts Eketorp, Sandby, and Ismantorp

Abstract: In the Iron Age AD, ringforts were constructed on the Swedish island Öland. Most of them contained a settlement inside. The remains of 15 of these ringforts are still preserved in the landscape. This thesis gives a general overview of the known and the possible Ölandic ringforts and their historical and constructional context, before analysing and comparing the settlements inside the ringforts Eketorp, Sandby, and Ismantorp regarding their spatial division and arrangement. At that, the focus lays on the main settlement phases in the Iron Age. The analysis was conducted to explore if there is a pattern in the arrangement of the settlements inside the ringforts and further to investigate the importance of sufficient open areas. In doing so, the arrangement and grouping of houses and open areas, the relation of built-up and open space, as well as the development of the respective interior settlement are analysed. The ringforts were an isolated and small settlement complex. Thus, usually there were houses with different kinds of functions (e.g. dwellings, stables, storehouses, workshops) within the ringforts. The results of this study show that there was more built-up space than open space inside each of the analysed ringforts. It is to assume that the open areas were used as public space respectively settlement squares. Consequently, it seems that the priority was to fit as many houses as possible into the limited inner area. Nevertheless, it was also important to have sufficient open areas (in terms of streets and squares) according to the ringfort’s function(s) and needs, as well as a well-connected street network inside the ringforts. The amount of open space probably depended on the ringfort’s function(s). Furthermore, the analysed ringforts were arranged similarly, with houses placed radially along the ring-wall, creating a large open place in the forts’ centre that was built-up in a later phase. A suggestion is that the ringforts all had a first phase in which houses were built only along the ring-wall and the centre was left open for a certain time – maybe until about 400 AD. This theory, however, is speculative and there is no proof for it yet; for that more excavations are needed.