Craft collaborations and household relations at the Viking Age emporium Ribe

In this short talk, I will examine the implications of proposing the household as the basic social and economic unit of the Viking-Age emporia for the organization of craft production and collaboration. The Northern Emporium excavation in Ribe revealed a sequence of buildings on one of the plots of the emporium spanning from the early 8^th to the second half of the 9^th century. The archaeological data indicates that these were used both for domestic activities and craft production, which could in several instances be associated to particular indoor spaces. These observations raise the question of the temporality (synchronicity, shifts from one house to the next) of these activities, of their management in relation to one another, and of the nature of the relationships between those who performed them. Rather than single specialized artisans, the setting of craft production identified in those instances suggests the combined efforts of whole households.