| 1. |
- Ekengren, Fredrik
(författare)
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Ritualization - Hybridization - Fragmentation : The Mutability of Roman Vessels in Germania Magna AD 1–400
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This PhD thesis deals with the transformation of imported vessels of Roman origin in Germania Magna during the Roman Iron Age, 1-400 AD. The concept of transformation in this context refers to the various ways these objects were interpreted, physically altered and consequently changed with regard to their function and meaning. Roman vessels in Germanic contexts are often regarded as evidence for Rome’s economic and socio-political influence on the tribes beyond the imperial boarders. Some scholars interpret them as an imitatio imperii, that is, as expressions of a Romanized lifestyle among the local elites. In this thesis, however, it is argued that these objects must be studied using perspectives that acknowledge interpretation and transformation as important elements in cultural interaction. Influenced by theoretical studies within anthropology and other social sciences, particularly the theories of practice and structuration, this thesis explores what happens when a category of foreign objects is appropriated by a society, what happens in the encounter between local traditions and new social situations and new material culture, and what those encounters result in. The thesis revolves around three case studies. The first one, on ritualization, investigates how vessels of Roman origin were utilized in Germanic funerary rituals. It analyses the funerary context as a field of social practice through which significance is generated and transformed, thus illuminating the structuring influences this context had on the rituals and the vessels themselves. The second case study on hybridization focusses on the combination of actual Roman vessels or vessel forms with local stylistic features, resulting in new expressions in the material culture. The objects studied are a small number of silver vessels that were produced locally and thus traditionally interpreted as imitations or forgeries of Roman vessels. Using this as a point of departure, the study deals with the question of authenticity in material culture and how external impulses are refracted and rearranged through the encounter with local structures, and then fused together with these to create new forms. The third study deals with the fragmentation of glass, more exactly, the intentional deposition of glass fragments in graves, either on the dead person (e.g., in the mouth or in the clothes), together with the grave goods, or in the grave fill. Based on this physical transformation the study explores the biography of the glass vessels, the encounter between Mediterranean rituals and indigenous traditions of ritual destruction, and the convergence of different regimens of value.
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| 2. |
- Göransson, Kristian
(författare)
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The Transport Amphorae from Euesperides : The Maritime Trade of a Cyrenaican City 400–250 BC
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present thesis is a study of Mediterranean trade 400-250 BC through an examination of transport amphorae from the ancient Cyrenaican city of Euesperides (Benghazi), Libya. The material comes from excavations conducted from 1999-2006 by the Society for Libyan Studies. Amphorae were used for the transportation of commodities such as wine and olive oil. Found in great numbers at the site they testify to the city's trading contacts in the ancient Mediterranean After an introduction to the subject of amphora studies (Chapter 1) and an historical and archaeological background (Chapter 2), the different classes and types of amphorae are presented (Chapter 3) with drawings and photographs. For certain types lists of parallels are given. Analysis of the ceramic fabrics is an important part of the method used in the study. It is emphasised that amphora morphologies must always be studied together with fabrics. The fabrics provided the key to the identification of the local or regional Cyrenaican amphorae, which are presented in detail. All the 1392 studied rims, bases and handles (RBH) were quantified by count in order to present the relative proportions of each type. Amphorae from selected contexts were also fully quantified, i.e. including bodysherds, in order to study potential variations between different levels of precision in the quantification. As a result, the RBH quantification was deemed reliable for a broadly dated and large set of material such as this. In Chapter 4 Mediterranean maritime trade is discussed and a number of inter-regional trade routes for the amphorae are suggested. The quantities and various provenances of the amphorae demonstrate that trade in amphora-borne commodities was undertaken over great distances and on a large scale. As much as 77% of the amphorae are imported, 5% from the Punic world and the remaining 72% from various parts of ancient Greece. The remaining 23% of the amphorae are Cyrenaican. The amphorae from Euesperides contribute significantly to altering our views on the extent and organisation of maritime trade for the period studied. Trade was not regionally-bounded; instead commodities were traded over long distances and along many parallel, inter-regional trade routes. Euesperides was a node in this system of inter-locking Mediterranean markets. The thesis thus demonstrates how a study of quantified amphorae can give a much fuller and richer understanding of trading contacts than traditional approaches focusing on stamped amphora handles. The results obtained provide a set of data from Euesperides which can be used as a point of reference and departure for other studies.
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| 3. |
- Helmbrecht, Michaela
(författare)
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Wirkmächtige Kommunikationsmedien : Menschenbilder der Vendel- und Wikingerzeit und ihre Kontexte
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This PhD thesis deals with anthropomorphic images from the Vendel and Viking Ages, their contexts and functions. The images are seen as means of communication with “effective power” or agency ("Wirkmächtigkeit"). They could have had a relationship of interaction or partial identity with what was represented, due to the fact that the Vendel and Viking Age societies were largely based on oral tradition. Using a semiotic approach, rules for the use of images can be deduced, and it can be differentiated between various levels of meanings. In a semiotic perspective, it is also the image-carrying object and the specific situation that contribute to the meanings of an image. The pictures are assigned to five groups: scenes, single figures, gestures and attributes, human-animal transformations, and heads/faces. These groups are subdivided into motif-groups and iconographic interpretations are discussed. Some important pictorial topics are journeys, battles, gender-specific actions, transformations between humans and animals, and binding. Only few motifs can be plausibly identified with narratives preserved in medieval texts. In the second part of the analysis, the image-carrying objects are discussed and compared with the written sources. The quantitatively largest groups are gold foil figures, components of clothing, and coins. Most motifs were used only on certain types of objects. Motifs and image carriers underwent changes during the Vendel and Viking Ages, especially in the decades before and around 800 A.D. Several motifs were transferred from the gold foil figures to pendants. Although the archaeological record and the information in the texts rarely correspond directly, the texts, too, contain distorted echoes of Vendel and Viking Age conceptions of the "Wirkmächtigkeit" of images, and their use in social strategies. Some situations of communication with and through pictures are discussed: the deposition of gold foil figures as an act of communication with “other worlds”; the material expression of gender identity in graves; the Gotlanders´ expression of their cultural identity and the role of anthropomorphic pictures at “central places”. The images were on the one hand media among the living, by conveying messages of wealth and visual complexity, which makes them active devices in social strategies. On the other hand, their Wirkmächtigkeit is also grounded in their artistic production, and in the relationship of mutual influence or partial identity of the image and the represented, so that the communication is also directed to “other worlds”.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Larsson, Mikael
(författare)
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Agrarian plant economy at Uppåkra and the surrounding area : Archaeobotanical studies of an Iron Age regional center
- 2015
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Up until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and probably since the introduction of agriculture to Sweden, the social life, culture, traditions, building patterns and material culture would largely have been based on agricultural practices. And yet, in the archaeological record, agricultural aspects of social life remain elusive and little is known about the organization of farming and of the handling and distribution of food and other agricultural products, both within settlements and on a societal level. This study focuses on Iron Age society at the regional center of Uppåkra, which is situated south of Lund in southern Sweden, and smaller farming settlements which surrounded it. In light of new investigations on botanical remains from these areas, the study aims to develop and discuss economic aspects of cultivated plants and to contribute to an extended interdisciplinary discussion on the regional center. Uppåkra was a center of political and religious power as well as of craftsmanship and trade. It was inhabited for more than a millennium. The site’s long continuity together with the size of the settlement and the high degree of specialization practiced there all raise questions on how food supplies and local communities were agriculturally organized. Whether the regional center affected the scope and focus of the plant economy in the surrounding farming community is discussed in terms of production and consumption, including local and regional perspectives.
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| 6. |
- Magnusson Staaf, Björn
(författare)
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An Essay on Copper Flat Axes
- 1996
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation can be read on at least two levels. On one level it will deal with- how general patterns of cognitive perception set frames for and affect human action in history and how these patterns may change. A study on copper flat axes will serve as a foundation for this discussion. This examination of copper flat axes will, however, at the same time examplify some of the problems concerning archaeological artifact analysis, for example typology. These problems describe another level of this dissertation, which presents and discusses some reflections considering archaeological artifact analysis, and how perception influences our observations and interpretations. The focus of this dissertation is thus set on perception, but the phenomenon of perception is encountered from two differing angles; one general perspective is set on perception and historical change, while the other is set on how perception conditions analytical reasoning in archaeology. The structurations of individual trajectories are suggested as being of central importance for setting the frames for rationality. Changing patterns of trajectories can therefore come to transform the general understanding of things. The reason and the understanding of the world are with other words created through communication. The reason and understanding of the world can come to differ between persons with different patterns of trajectories. It is claimed in this dissertation that the relationships between communication, individual trajectories, reason and ideology have been of large importance for the transformations of cultural discourse in history.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Nord, Jenny
(författare)
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Changing Landscapes and Persistent Places : An Exploration of the Bjäre Peninsula
- 2009
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Changing Landscapes and Persistent Places is a study of the cultural landscape on the Bjäre peninsula in northwest Skåne. The many Bronze Age remains that give the landscape its distinctive character are the starting point for an attempt to increase our understanding of the historical depth of today’s landscape. The two perspectives of “landscape” and “places” carry the discussion forward, almost in dialogue form. From an archaeological point of view, studying the landscape itself is a relatively new way of considering landscape; usually archaeology is more geared to individual sites and their mutual relations, or to the human impact on the landscape as this can be read, for instance, in pollen diagrams. Yet there is great need for a new holistic approach to the landscape. This need arises from the European Landscape Convention which is soon to be ratified in Sweden. Among other things, the convention means that the landscape must be treated as a whole, with increased democratic influence and with greater understanding of the extensive processes of change to which today’s landscape is exposed. The dissertation studies the landscape and antiquities of Bjäre through traditional landscape archaeology and through interdisciplinary methods, in order to arrive at an understanding of the conditions in which people lived in prehistoric times. Extensive fieldwork has also been done to give a more complete and fair picture of the rock carvings in the area. Another important part of the work has been to develop new methods for understanding today’s landscape as a whole and the processes that have shaped it. The English method of landscape analysis, Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC), is very well suited to both these purposes and to the needs and demands of the European Landscape Convention, and the dissertation includes a pilot study intended to develop this method. Results that can be highlighted are: Both the landscape itself and the places within it have been active agents in the shaping of the world around us. There is a continuous dialogue between people and the landscape with its places in the constant processes of change. That is why places are so important to us; they shape us, they remember along with us, and they share in the making of our world. Detailed studies in small areas can give us a great deal of information about prehistoric society and the reality that once existed. This knowledge is important if we are to be able to get close to the people in the otherwise so large and sweeping narratives that are written about the past, in which there is no room for individual people with their choices and everyday life. The wealth of variety that one can see in local contexts must be made clear. The analysis of the Bronze Age in Bjäre has shown that there are different ways to use both places and landscape in a local context, both over time and in different geographical landscape spaces. The study shows the potential of the HLC method for satisfying the needs and demands of the everyday planning and handling of landscape, and also for research purposes and as a basis for interdisciplinary discussions. Finally, the study has shown that prehistoric remains have often been of great significance for changes that have taken place in the landscape in later periods. This tradition, of making the landscape readable, is something that we as archaeologists should stick to, allowing it to stand as our contribution to the planning and management of the landscape of the future.
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| 10. |
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On the Road : Studies in Honour of Lars Larsson
- 2007
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Samlingsverk (redaktörskap) (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- On the Road is a book about travels and about travellers. The book contains articles written to honour Lars Larsson, Professor of Archaeology at Lund University, Sweden, upon the occasion of his 60th birthday. Lars Larsson is a scholar who has been particularly active in extablishing and maintaining contact with colleagues and departments worldwide.The fifty-three articles illustrate the complexities of the concept of travel in the past and in the present.
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