Search

In Scandinavian Early Bronze Age rock art (c. 1700–500 BC) anthropomorphic figures largely consist of simple stick figures that only occasionally relate to other motifs. Although they do not seem to ‘dO' much, their composition is often more complex than what first meets the eye. For instance, a significant portion of the anthropomorphs lacks one or more body parts and seem to have been deliberately made anonymous. It is argued that this fragmentary and generic appearance of the anthropomorphic petroglyphs is related to the function of rock art as vitalist devices. The allure of partial and vague motifs can attract, trap, confuse, create ambiguity, and stress, as well as promote curiosity, fascination, and incite subsequent actions by humans and other-than-humans. These issues are explored through a study of the anthropomorphic rock art motifs of the Mälaren Bay in eastern-central Sweden.

This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that 'become' in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing epistemological relativism with ontological fluidity. It is argued here that the hypothetical mutability of burial assemblages can be reduced significantly by addressing the varying speed and degree of the involved processes of integration and disintegration. By doing this, the main focus is shifted to the animacy of such processes and how they may have been understood and utilized in burials. Using both general and specific examples, it is argued that cremation burials can be studied as carefully compiled amalgamations that utilize the properties and animacies of different materialities to deal with death, corpses and the afterlife.

Studies of rock art normally depart from a classification of type, style and what the motifs represents or depicture. South Scandinavian rock art, however, are often vague, incomplete and fragmentary. In this chapter, it is argued that certain rock art motifs, mainly boats and anthropomorphs, were deliberately made incomplete as a part of a vitalist technology with the aim to affect the world. An important aspect of such visual vagueness, intentional or not, is that it can function as a punctum in Roland Barthes terminology and evoke affect among the beholder. The incomplete motifs also stress the making of rock art as a continuous process in which details can be added over time to enhance certain aspects or radically alter the motif. The chapter is illustrated with examples of Bronze Age rock art of the Mälaren district in central-eastern Sweden.

This paper explores a formal method of analysing cumulative visual expressions that do not rely on representation or iconographic mimesis. A study of a tagged roller shutter in central Stockholm revealed a number of non-discursive aspects of the visual culture of the graffiti scene. The ways in which the taggers adapted when the shutter became full stress aspects of visibility and indicate a hierarchy of the available space. That overlapping of tags was avoided suggests that older tags were respected even though the available area was limited. A parallel case study was performed on a Bronze Age rock art panel. The rock art, which is quite different from graffiti in most respects, nevertheless shows similar concerns with hierarchical space, horizontal distribution, and respect for previous images, and an ontological status of being something more than mere images.

The text discusses the possibilities of Bronze Age petroglyphs working as vitalist contraptions produced to harvest or affect certain animacies in coastal milieus. As primarily magical devices, a wider range of properties of the petroglyphs becomes important besides their figurative and representational facets. For example, the mediality and physicality of the motifs, including aspects of size, embellishment, and symmetry, as well as relations between the motifs, the rock and the water. A case study based on the dense concentration of rock art in the Boglosa area of central eastern Sweden suggests, considering these aspects in full, that the petroglyphs are most likely to have worked as magic contraptions. Cut into the bedrock at the water's edge, they utilize the resilience of rock for permanence while either being consecrated by water or employed as contraptions to affect a particular body of water.

During the Early Bronze Age in northern Europe, tree-like features appear in henges, burials, and rock art in ways that differ from earlier periods. Rather than investigating this phenomenon in symbolic or metaphorical terms, a concept of tree-nes s is explored that focuses on the real constitution of trees and what trees actually do. It is suggested that the accentuation of tree-ness in Early Bronze Age ritual contexts can be related to an ontological shift in conjunction with emerging bronze technology in which different entities can merge or take advantage of each other's generative properties.

In the last few decades archaeology in Swedish museums have undergone major changes. From being a recognizable part of museum activities, archeology has more and more disappeared from the local museums. In a competitive market, a transparent economy is required. No grants, subventions or contribution founded money allowed. All work must be financed by the market. In many regions, the consequence of this has been that earlier archaeological departments at museums have been cut of from the rest of the museum organization. Instead of being run by a museum, contract archaeology is now run by companies. As a result museums have lost their connection to research-based knowledge production within archaeology, and contract archaeology has lost its link to the many skills a museum holds.

The present text discusses Bronze Age rock art as an active and integrated materiality, entangled in social relations rather than be- ing a passive reflection of ideology or cosmology. A key tenet is that rock art imagery has the potential to incite actions and to affect the course of events. The main focus of the study is set on rock art along the former shoreline of the Mälaren bay in eastern central Sweden. This area comprises one of the most varied and dense clusters of Bronze Age rock art in southern Scandinavia, situated on the northern perimeter of the core area of the southern tradition. The in-between location between the northern and southern traditions of rock art implies a wider social context to the development in the area. It is suggested that the imagery emerged in concert with the shifting relations between the maritime-oriented individuals and groups of varying traditions and life-styles that moved about in the Mälaren bay. By emphasising social complexity and hybridisation, processes in which rock art took part, it is possible to bypass some of the binary thinking that has plagued rock-art research (e.g. real/imaginary, mobile/sedentary, Bronze Age/Neolithic, ritual/social). In this perspective, the imagery is also allowed to contribute to our understanding of this period in- stead of merely reflecting our pre-understandings of the Bronze Age in general. In order to discuss potential agentive aspects of rock art, the traditional iconographic perspective of imagery as vehicles for meaning or symbolism is displaced in favour of a greater concern with what imagery in its material form actually does. The study departs from a relational ontology that focuses on the material aspects of the production, visual culture and how sites and panels progress over time. In this perspective, rock art is thus not only considered a representation of reality, but as ‘material articula- tions’ — something between materiality and practice. Instead of agency, the animacy

This text discusses reuse and modications of older graves in southern Sweden during the Late Iron Age and early medieval period (c. 9th to 12th centuries AD). Post-burial practices in the Late Iron Age have in general been interpreted as means to negotiate status, identity and rights to land, while in the later part of the period they are comprehended as expressions of religious insecurity and syncretism. In this text, the continuity of post-burial practices during the whole period is stressed and instead of general top-down interpretative models, the ontological status and material aspects of death, dead bodies and their graves is emphasized. It is argued that the post-burial actions generally constituted ways of relating to a specific type of materiality, the bones of the ancient dead, which transgress binary categorizations such as living–dead, past–present, heathen–Christian, and human–nonhuman. The argument builds on recently excavated sites in southern Sweden: Bogla, Broby Bro, Lilla Ullevi, Valsta and Vittene.

This chapter is intended to outline the main postmodern theoretical influences in archaeology. Although it may be difficult to identify a distinct postmodern strand of archaeology, it is apparent that there are trends and issues within archaeological theory that are clearly influenced by postmodern lines of thought. One example is the issue of relativity of ‘facts’ and historicity of interpretations stressed by many post-processual archaeologists. This ambivalence regarding archaeological data has for some led to a loss of faith in archaeology’s abilities to say something definitive about the past. For others, it has initiated critical discussions of how, and under what conditions, narratives of the past are produced. For instance, there has been an increasing concern with ethical issues and the political use of archaeology (e.g. heritage management, local and indigenous archaeologies, the repatriation of objects and human remains). Archaeology in the postmodern condition is thus principally characterized by increasing diversity in subject areas and theory, but also by a broader definition of the discipline and its roles in contemporary society.

Pictorial and visual elements are special types of archaeological data that transgress boundaries: between us and the past and between the material and immaterial. Traditionally, images have been discussed in terms of what they represent, mean or symbolize. In this volume, the authors explore other ways in which images aect and engage the beholder and the modes in which they are entangled in past worlds. The articles comprise examples from various regions and time periods and include a diverse array of topics including northern European rock art of the Neolithic and Bronze Age, anthropomorphic aspects of ceramic pots and figures in gold, erotic themes on children’s burial vessels, and nineteenth-century rock art created by quarantined sailors in Australia.

The present text discusses the significance of the postmodern condition in contemporary archaeology. Five themes associated with postmodernism are discussed (a) the relativization of truth, knowledge, and meaning, (b) the fragmentation of the grand narrative, (c) the relation between agency and discourse, (d) pluralism, multivocality, and heterogeneity, and (e) rhetoric and styles of writing. In contemporary debate it has been suggested that postmodernism is a past phase and that these contested issues have become less important. It is, however, argued here that these are by no means resolved, but rather bypassed by shifting focus to archaeology as a contemporary practice or, in theoretical terms, towards particularistic neo-materialist ontologies.

In archaeology, the discussion concerning food and ingestion has primarily focused on diet, i.e., what people have eaten. Large quantities of deposited animal bones have been analysed over the years and complex scientific analyses of human bones have been carried out in order to establish nutrition and subsistence via 13C and other isotope analyses. It is a little puzzling why so much effort has been invested in establishing variation in prehistoric diets and so little interest in elaborating on the social dimensions of commensality. The daily dinner is not just a matter of consuming nourishment; it involves planning and gathering ingredients, and thinking about ways of cooking them and how to combine them. Eating and drinking require a number of key social elements such as materiality, spatial arrangement and place, bodily experiences, mental expectations,and bonding/exclusion.There is a considerable social dimen- sion in food that goes far beyond pure biological needs.