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Vänboken Med hjärta och hjärna innehåller en mångfald av artiklar som på olika sätt och på flera olika plan knyter an till professor Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladhs forskargärning. Under drygt fyrtio år har Arwill-Nordbladh varit arkeologin trogen och hon har ägnat sin forskning åt arkeologihistoria, genus, kroppslighet och materialitet, perspektiv på yngre järnålder, minne och minnespraktiker samt livsberättelser. Artikelförfattarna tar genom sina perspektiv med läsaren på en rad resor genom tider och rumsligheter, land och hav samt städer och landsbygder. Med hjälp av arkeologiska lämningar och arkivmaterial vidgar artikelförfattarna från olika discipliner vår förståelse av människors verkligheter och föreställningsvärldar.

Understanding patterns of colonisation is important for explaining both the distribution of single species and anticipating how ecosystems may respond to global warming. Insular flora may be especially vulnerable because oceans represent severe dispersal barriers. Here we analyse two lake sediment cores from Iceland for ancient sedimentary DNA to infer patterns of colonisation and Holocene vegetation development. Our cores from lakes Torfdalsvatn and Nykurvatn span the last c. 12,000 cal yr BP and c. 8600 cal yr BP, respectively. With near-centennial resolution, we identified a total of 191 plant taxa, with 152 taxa identified in the sedimentary record of Torfdalsvatn and 172 plant taxa in the sedimentary record of Nykurvatn. The terrestrial vegetation at Torfdalsvatn was initially dominated by bryophytes, arctic herbs such as Saxifraga spp. and grasses. Around 10,100 cal yr BP, a massive immigration of new taxa was observed, and shrubs and dwarf shrubs became common whereas aquatic macrophytes became dominant. At Nykurvatn, the dominant taxa were all present in the earliest samples; shrubs and dwarf shrubs were more abundant at this site than at Torfdalsvatn. There was an overall steep increase both in the local accumulated richness and regional species pool until 8000 cal yr BP, by which time 3/4 of all taxa identified had arrived. The period 4500-1000 cal yr BP witnessed the appearance of a a small number of bryophytes, graminoids and forbs that were not recorded in earlier samples. The last millennium, after human settlement of the island (Landnam), is characterised by a sudden disappearance of Juniperus communis, but also reappearance of some high arctic forbs and dwarf shrubs. Notable immigration during the Holocene coincides with periods of increased incidence of sea ice, and we hypothesise that this may have acted as a dispersal vector. Thus, although ongoing climate change might provide a suitable habitat in Iceland for a large range of species only found in the neighbouring regions today, the reduction of sea ice may in fact limit the natural colonisation of new plant species.

This bachelor’s thesis covers the usage, deposition and trade of hallstatt swords in Sweden during the late bronze age. While much has been said about the findings of hallstatt swords within the geographical boundaries of the Hallstatt culture comparably little has been written about the rich collection of the same swords found in southern Scandinavia. This thesis aims to discuss the context of these findings through spatial and comparative analysis together with the interpretations of previous archaeologists to figure out how these foreign objects may have been used outside of their area of origin. The findings conclude that the Swedish hallstatt swords have been deposited in the traditions prevalent in Scandinavia at the time and many of them show signs of local production. The blade damage prevalent on some swords suggest a different usage from the perceived cavalry weapons observed in Hallstatt. The swords have been interpreted from a post processual perspective as living objects whos destruction and deposit mimics that of the death and burial of the human user.

Fifty years ago, Heyerdahl and Skjolsvold (1956, 1990) collected material from five archaeological sites in the Galapagos Islands. They retained earthenwares of possible precolumbian origin and discarded ceramic, metal, and glass artifacts postdating the arrival of the Spanish in A.D. 1535. Consequently, they argued that each site was formed as the results of a series of discard events from unrelated short-term occupations extending from the precolumbian to the historical era, and that the earthenwares represented occasional visits by fishermen from precolumbian Peru and Ecuador. In 2005, we re -excavated the sites and collected all the excavated materials. Our results show that each class of material, irrespective of age or origin, was distributed spatially and stratigraphically in the same pattern, contradicting the former assumption of multiple, unrelated occupations. We reject the palimpsest model in favor of the null hypothesis of single-phase site occupation. Analysis of putatively precolumbian pottery using optically-stimulated luminescence dating indicates that it is mostly of historical age. Radiocarbon dating confirms that the archaeological sites are younger than the sixteenth century. Research on sedimentary cores shows probable anthropogenic impacts as restricted to the last 500 years. We conclude that there was no human occupation in the Galapagos Islands until the historical era.

Under lång tid har mayafolkets landskap, av arkeologer, ansetts vara homogent. Detta har bidragit till tolkningen att det förhållande som mayabefolkningen hade till sin urbana levnadsmiljö respektive omgivande topografi, likväl som förhållande till det kulturella livet har sett likadant ut oberoende av region. I realiteten är det naturliga landskapet i Mesoamerika heterogent, vilket då även resulterar i urbana och kulturella skillnader mellan regionerna.

I denna uppsats kommer undersökas och diskuteras de skillnader som finns mellan de olika mayakulturerna och hur detta kan ha påverkat jordbruket inom regionerna. Dessutom kommer regionerna jämföras med avseende på potentiella skillnader i kultur likväl som rumsliga skillnader i topografi och det urbana landskapet. Den klassiska tidsepoken (250-950 e.Kr.) kommer vara i fokus, men som referenspunkter och med grund i att olika städer uppstod vid olika epoker kommer även andra tidsperioder att behandlas i uppsatsen. Denna uppsats är baserad på litteratur studier och är en kvalitativ undersökning.

This essay will discuss where the people who built the passage graves and the first farmers at the Falbygden area in Sweden came from. That the first farmers built the passage graves is today a given fact, but how did the Neolithic transition take form in Scandinavia? Two theories have been put forward over the past century, that they learned through cultural diffusion, or that the first farmers were immigrants. Recent DNA- and Strontiumanalyses have been made on skeletons from passage graves from Falbygden and on skeletons from different regions across Europe, both from Mesolithic and Neolithic people. These results show that the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers shares no or little continuity with the Neolithic farmers, even in cases where the two groups lived in close neighbouring for a long time.

This dissertation explores the boundaries of archaeology. Its subject is an archaeological practice that no longer seems to be able to challenge our modern conception of the world. We are faced with an archaeology that takes the form of a conservative and repetitive practice, because of the discipline’s demand that discussions on epistemology and ontology within its discourse should be incorporated in a presupposed teleological assignment. They must be part of the modern archaeological project or else their critique is irrelevant.

The initial disappointment is transformed into an inquisitive exploration of archaeology’s limitations. At the archaeological frontier several keywords are used to illustrate the architecture of that archaeological space. Concepts such as narrative, time, the trace and reality act as themes for a conversation on archaeology and the archaeological. Postprocessual archaeology is called upon as a primary discussant in this conversation, playing the part of a textual embodiment of a virtual archaeological formula. One major component of this formula that is discussed is archaeology’s connection to the historical. History as a narrative form, as a perspective on time and as a metanarrative to refer our statements to, is found to be a metaphysical fundament for the archaeological project, delimiting our understanding of the temporal relationship between the past and the present.

The thesis briefly discusses an alternative nostalgic archaeology but this hypothetical post-historic archaeology can never be articulated, since its destiny will be the same as all other similar attempts within archaeology – i.e. to become part of an updated modern archaeological practice. The exploration then ends with an insight that there is no escape from either archaeology or modernity. What is left is only to point out the boundaries, and to let the dreams of freedom that go beyond them keep us from falling into a discursive sleep.

Horses have played a large part in many cultures across the world, the Scandinavian Viking Age included. They are frequently found in graves and sacrificial sites, meant to denote, or represent the status and social caste of the humans they served. More and more studies and research projects are now taking place where the horses are allowed to take center stage, but these rarely touch on the subject of the horse’s agency. Were the abilities of the horses themselves what determined whether they be brutally sacrificed, or whether they keep serving the living? This is an area of study which hopes to introduce new perspectives into a complicated, lengthy debate over horses in sacrificial contexts, and shift focus away from the anthropocentric perspective that has dominated the subject. This study will discuss the archaeological and osteological finds in Scandinavia through a social zooarchaeological perspective, in an effort to offer a different perspective and to give agency to one animal that helped to shape our world.

This paper discusses runic inscriptions from the middle ages on Gotland and how they portray social structure. It focuses on three themes: (1) fixed time and space, (2) women and the nuclear family and (3) profession and social status/structure. It also discusses changes brought on by a more structured and established Christianity, as well as differences between medieval rune stones on Gotland and their predecessors Viking Age rune stones in the Mälar Valley.

Husgrunderna från Buttle Änge visar, förutom sin skilda storlek, upp en olikartad karaktär vad gäller konstruktion, kulturlagrens djup och delvis fyndmaterial. Vidare arkeologiska undersökningar och analyser behövs för att klarlägga husens tidshorisont, funktion och relation till varandra. Är de skilda husen samtidiga eller förligger det kronologiska och/eller funktionella skillnader? Forskningsprojektet syftar även till att ge en ökad förståelse av de kronologiska och kontextuella relationerna mellan bildstensplats och gårdsmiljö genom seklerna både vid Buttle Änge och generellt via jämförande studier av andra bildstensplatser och stengrundsmiljöer.

In this report the field documentation and the results from the 2015 archaeological investigations at Nygårds 1:28, Buttle parish on the farm Buttle Änge, Gotland, Sweden, are presented. The excavations in 2015 are a continuation of surveys from 2009 and 2013-2014 (see Andreeff, Melander & Bakunic Fridén 2014; Andreeff & Melander 2015) conducted as field courses in archaeology by Uppsala University. The campaign is a part of Andreeff’s research projects Stones and People: Viking Age Picture stones from the Island of Gotland and Picture stone sites and Stone house foundations: Iron Age in the Gotlandic Inland. The field investigations were led by Alexander Andreeff, Paul Wallin and Alexander Sjöstrand, Uppsala University.

The results from different rendering techniques will be shown in this article and briefly discussed with regard to investigations of the pictorial surface on three picture stones from Gotland, Sweden. The island is the largest in the Baltic Sea and is well-known for its very rich and outstanding archaeological material, especially from the Viking Age and Early Medieval period. The picture stones that are the case studies for this article originate from three different sites on Gotland: Fröjel Bottarve, Fröjel Stenstugu and Buttle Änge. All of these sites are located in rural areas with rich agricultural lands and an abundance of ancient remains that speak of habitation and land use since at least the Bronze Age to present day. Fröjel Stenstugu and Buttle Änge are still standing at their original sites while Fröjel Bottarve was found re-used in a grave.

In this report the field documentation and the results from the 2017 archaeological investigations at Nygårds 1:28, Buttle parish on the historical farm Buttle Änge, Gotland, Sweden, are presented. The excavations in 2017 are a continuation of surveys from 2009 and 2013–2016 (see Andreeff & Melander 2015; Andreeff, Melander & Bakunic Fridén 2014; Andreeff, Melander & Sjöstrand 2017; Melander 2017; Melander, Andreeff & Sjöstrand 2017) conducted as field courses in archaeology by Uppsala University. The campaign is a part of Andreeff’s research projects Stones and People: Viking Age Picture stones from the Island of Gotland and Picture stone sites and Stone house foundations: Iron Age in the Gotlandic Inland. The field investigations were led by Alexander Andreeff, Paul Wallin, Alexander Sjöstrand, Uppsala University and Victor Melander, The Australian National University.

The summed probability distribution of 162 radiocarbon dates from Gotland was analysed with reference to archaeological and environmental data in order to evaluate possible variations in settlement intensity on the island. The data indicated variations in demographic development on the island, with probably several different colonization events and external influences; the pioneer settlement reached the island around 9200 cal. BP. After the initial colonization, the radiocarbon dates were rather evenly distributed until around 7700-7600 cal. BP, then there was a drop in the number of dates between 8300 and 8000 cal. BP that may be associated with the 8200 cold event. A marked decline in the number of dates between 7600 and 6000 cal. BP may be associated initially with the Littorina I transgression, but this transgression cannot explain why the Late Mesolithic period is not well represented on Gotland: the climatic development was favourable but did not result in increased human activity. The number of radiocarbon dates indicated that the population size remained low until around 6000 cal. BP, after which there was a gradual increase that reached a first 'threshold' after 5600 cal. BP and a second 'threshold' after 4500 cal. BP. The first apparent population increase was associated with the appearance of the Funnel Beaker Culture (FBC) and the second with Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) complexes. A decline in the number of dates occurred after 4300 cal. BP, i.e. towards the Late Neolithic. There was an association between the frequency distributions of the radiocarbon dates and the number of stray finds from different time periods but any correlation was not straightforward. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.

This paper presents the results of a consensus-driven process identifying 50 priority research questions for historical ecology obtained through crowdsourcing, literature reviews, and in-person workshopping. A deliberative approach was designed to maximize discussion and debate with defined outcomes. Two in-person workshops (in Sweden and Canada) over the course of two years and online discussions were peer facilitated to define specific key questions for historical ecology from anthropological and archaeological perspectives. The aim of this research is to showcase the variety of questions that reflect the broad scope for historical-ecological research trajectories across scientific disciplines. Historical ecology encompasses research concerned with decadal, centennial, and millennial human-environmental interactions, and the consequences that those relationships have in the formation of contemporary landscapes. Six interrelated themes arose from our consensus-building workshop model: (1) climate and environmental change and variability; (2) multi-scalar, multi-disciplinary; (3) biodiversity and community ecology; (4) resource and environmental management and governance; (5) methods and applications; and (6) communication and policy. The 50 questions represented by these themes highlight meaningful trends in historical ecology that distill the field down to three explicit findings. First, historical ecology is fundamentally an applied research program. Second, this program seeks to understand long-term human-environment interactions with a focus on avoiding, mitigating, and reversing adverse ecological effects. Third, historical ecology is part of convergent trends toward transdisciplinary research science, which erodes scientific boundaries between the cultural and natural.