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Under tre år (2017–19) har institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur bedrivit fältkurser på Jordbrogravfältet i Österhaninge, Södermanland (L2014:3046). Sex stensättningar undersöktes på gravfältet. En rund övertorvad stensättning i gravfältets sydöstra utkant, en oregelbunden i gravfältet mellersta del, samt en rund, en fyrsidig och två tresidiga gravar i gravfältets nordöstra del. Samtliga stensättningar väster om gångvägen tolkades utifrån formen på stenkistor och ned- grävningar samt fynd av tandemalj som jordbegravningar, vilka indirekt kan dateras till huvud- sakligen romersk järnålder. Den övertorvade stensättningen i den sydöstra delen var en krema- tionsgrav med något senare datering i övergången mellan romersk järnålder–folkvandringstid vilket antyder en generell horisontell stratigrafi i sydöstlig riktning. Gravarna i den nordöstra delen överlagrade delvis åtta ben- och keramikdepositioner/gravgömmor, tre mindre gravar från yngre bronsålder samt boplatslämningar från stenålder. I området utan synliga anläggningar syd- öst om gravfältet grävdes sammanlagt 16 sökschakt om 1x4–7m. I dessa framkom stolphål och odlingspår från huvudsakligen historisk tid, men även en härdbotten och en nedgrävning med krossad keramik av äldre järnålderskaraktär.

Projektet digitala bilder för forskning och publik syftade till att utveckla en digital dokumentationsstrategi för hällbilder anpassad för aktuella forskningsfrågor kring bronsålderns bildbruk. Metoden utgick från en flexibel kombination av två- och tredimensionell dokumentation som utöver själva bilderna också omfattar hela hällarna. De tredimensionella modellerna är tänkta att ligga till grund för både forskning och publik förmedling utan behov av destruktiva metoder som att framhäva bilderna med färg. De utgör även ett digitalt underlag för skade- inventering och analys av slitage och vittring av hällarna.Projektet dokumenterade 36 hällar i sydvästra Uppland med olika metoder. Av dessa tolkades 31 okulärt och 27 med tredimensionella tekniker. Projektet utvärderade olika metoder och apparatur som Structure from motion (SfM), fotogrammetri med stereopar, 3D-scanners (Leica MS60 och RTC360). Mest effektiv visade sig vara en kombination av okulär besiktning (tolkning) och 3D- modeller skapade genom SfM vilket fångade såväl svaga ristningsfigurer som hällens mikrotopografi. En positiv synergieffekt av projektet var också många nyfynd av tidigare okända figurer samt nya tolkningar av tidigare kända motiv.

The different documentation methods of rock art all have their pros and cons in recording petroglyphs. Traditionally it is the figurative content that has been in focus, but because Bronze Age motifs often relate to and incorporate the topography and mineral composition of the rock there is a need to also capture these aspects to a higher degree. The new 3D-techniques offer interesting possibilities to achieve this. Hitherto, handheld scanners and photogrammetrical approaches have been employed to record smaller areas of rock art but they are only rarely capable of capturing a larger part of an outcrop. To capture a fuller context of the petroglyphs, we have evaluated the potential of other types of 3D-scanners; a Multistation scanner, Leica MS60 and a dedicated dome-scanner, Leica RTC360, to record seven whole rock outcrops with rock art in central-eastern Sweden. Our tests conclude that although the scanners perform parts of the recording process differently, they both are capable of capturing even faint petroglyphs as well as the curvature and topography of a whole outcrop, including textures in colour.

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.

The boat motif in Bronze Age rock art is generally assumed to represent real or symbolic boats in some form. In this paper, however, it is argued that Bronze Age rock art motifs are independent material articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. From such a perspective, the hybrid character of the boat motif as part animal, part object is conceived as a special type of entity, an object-being that has no original elsewhere. The change of perspective, from representation to articulation, and from object to being, allows for a more coherent view of Bronze Age rock art as primarily enacted imagery integrated with rock and metal as vitalist devices, aimed to affect the world.

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.

The first meeting in Nordic Theoretical Archaeology Group (Nordic TAG) was held in 1985. The – so far – last meeting in Nordic TAG was held in Copenhagen in 2015. At this meeting, the theme was “the Next 30 years in Theoretical Archaeology” – or in other words the aim wasto discussin which direction theories in the archaeological discipline will develop and especially what new theories, methodologies and perspectives might influence the field in the future. Tragicomically – or prophetically – no meetings have been organized since then. Now almost five years later we must ask: what is the future of Nordic TAG, and what does the lack of it tell us about the development of theoretical archaeology in the Nordic countries today?

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.

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.