Jötunsteinn culture
The people of the Jötunsteinn culture inhabited the greater part of present-day Helminthasse and Siurskeyti, as well as parts of Alcasia and Soeria, from approximately 3500 BCE to roughly 1200 BCE. Although they are particularly known for the erection of large stone structures – from which practice emerges their familiar name – the Jötunsteinn spanned the late Neolithic period and its transition into the early Bronze Age.
Origins
The beginnings of the Jötunsteinn peoples are usually held to lie with a significant shift in population from around the middle of the fourth millennium BCE, which brought large numbers into what are now Siurskeyti and Helminthasse from the south-east (areas now part of Zeppengeran). These peoples, who had been well-established in their home region – where they are known to modern archaeologists and ethnologists as the Lindenstadt people, after the location of the largest and best-preserved of their settlements – broke up the native Vítrör communities, forcing some of them inland to the north and east, towards what is today Odann. The newcomers, bringing with them more advanced agricultural techniques developed in their southern homelands, overran and largely absorbed the mainly piscatorial Vítrör.
The Jötunsteinn period is usually divided into two periods for ease of reference, with the dividing line approximating to the culture’s widespread adoption of bronze-working, established by modern carbon-dating techniques as at 2200 ± 100 BCE.
The great stones
The early Jötunsteinn period saw the construction of several large stone structures (the term jötunsteinn comes from the Hártal for “giant stone”); although most fell into disarray or, frequently in later centuries, were dismantled and broken up by locals for building stone, some relatively complete examples remain in existence, notably at Álansæssur in north-western Æthelin and at Karinhólm in the south of Geirroð. The purposes for these constructions remain, to some extent, conjecture at present.
Theories have been raised which cast the stones as tombs or burial monuments, and this is supported to an extent by the presence of tumuli (Hártal haugar) in these areas. In 1948 the Siursk archaeologist Salvía Náð raised the theory that they were actually used for astronomical calculations, given the high importance of stellar and planetary observation in much of Thúrun practice during the Jötunsteinn period; however, insufficient evidence exists at the present time to confirm or deny this supposition.
Metalworking
It is unclear how and from where the middle-period Jötunsteinn gained the knowledge to mine and smelt copper; while deposits of copper can be found in modern Helminthasse and to a lesser extent in Siurskeyti, these remained difficult to access until the development of mechanical mining techniques in the late 18th century. However, significant trade routes existed linking the far west of Messenia with the north-central region (now mainly the territory of Savam) and with the south-central lands, where the precursors of the Antissan culture had already developed bronze and bronze-working; spectrum analysis of bronze pieces from both regions show Helmin and Siursk-sourced tin content, and some kind of technological exchange with both regions seems viable. Other forms of bronze – copper typically alloyed with arsenic or antimony – are comparatively rare in Jötunsteinn finds, and were probably taken in trade rather than manufactured locally.
Middle-period Jötunsteinn bronze has been found primarily in the form of ingots and axe-heads – the latter consistent with the idea of weapons caches, which was a commonplace of the period. Later work extends to smaller bronze daggers, as well as ornamental pins and bracelets.
The fall of the Jötunsteinn
While the Jötunsteinn peoples had had mostly peaceable dealings with the polities to the south, the large Antissan polity of Dammuri was beginning to show increasing ambition for new territory; with routes for expansion to the north (towards modern-day Elland) largely blocked by superior forces, they instead turned their attentions to the comparatively easier pickings available to their north-west. The Dammurites’ king, Seles (sometimes recorded as Shelesh) drove a campaign of acquisition into the region; the western borders of the Dammurite realm reached the Tharkur – the river which today marks the boundary between Helminthasse and Nation 50 – by about 1500 BCE, and had probably extended beyond the present-day site of Virkið by 1450 BCE.
While internal disputes in the Dammurite heartlands prevented the invaders from holding their gains long enough to consolidate their position, the ebb and flow of conquest was sufficient to disrupt the Jötunsteinn, and to set in train a process of disintegration that was probably functionally complete by the time that the army of the later Larhine Empire returned in force in the late 12th and early 11th centuries BCE.