Maintaining boundaries: Early Iron Age settlement dynamics and spatial organisation at Dilling in Southeast Norway

In this article, we discuss the changes in spatial organization and development of a settlement with 136 buildings from the farm Dilling in Viken county in southeastern Norway. Most houses date between 200 BC and AD 200 but there are also buildings from the Late Bronze Age and throughout the Early Iron Age. Here, we use the building dates and their characteristics, with a special focus on farms with fences and contemporary houses constituting farmyards, to study the dynamics and spatial organization over time. We argue that there were two types of boundaries present in the landscape at Dilling: one type around larger residential areas/house areas consisting of empty space between them, and another involving smaller, individual boundaries between farms within the house areas. We also suggest that there was a change in the organisation around 200–150 BC, perhaps related to changing proprietary rights to land. This occurred at the same time as the appearance of a large farm with hall-functions.