| 1. |
- Apel, Jan
(author)
-
Daggers, knowledge & power
- 2001
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation investigates how far the organisation of a traditional technology corresponds to the degree of social complexity in a sedentary, agrarian society. An examination of the production of flint daggers during the Late Stone Age and Early Bronze Age of Scandinavia indicates the presence of formal apprenticeship systems based on corporate descent groups. Thus, the Late Neolithic societies in Scandinavia were more complex than previously thought. The flint dagger technology is subjected to an operational-chain analysis. This method is rooted in Durkeimian sociology and, consequently, technical gestures are regarded as social phenomena that are learned in social contexts. Two important concepts form the basis of my investigation: (1) knowledge (connaissance) and (2) know-how (savoir-faire). Knowledge has an explicit and declarative character and can be communicated to others; it can be passed from teacher to pupil by word of mouth, signs or written language. Know-how is an unconscious memory that springs from practical experience only. It is intuitive, connected with body movements and can only be learned by practical repetition. The gestures involved in each of the defined dagger-production stages were graded according to their relative degree of knowledge and know-how during practical experiments. Some stages were based on simple knowledge and a low degree of know-how. Other stages demanded a fair proportion of knowledge, in the form of recipes for action, and very high degree of know-how. This suggests that the craftsmanship was handed down through the generations by a form of apprenticeship system based on hereditary principles. The logic behind this reasoning is twofold. First, in such a system, the time needed to transmit know-how through the generations made the principle of kinship the most convenient mechanism for recruitment. Second, flint and manufacturing skills were valuable assets that stimulated some form of limited access and thus regulations of group membership. Accordingly, fixed social institutions were present in the Late Neolithic communities of Scandinavia and the presence of such formal institutions are indications of a fairly high level of social complexity. The flint-technology therefore entailed a highly developed craftsmanship, and the flint daggers were distributed over large areas of northern and central Europe by corporate groups or by regional and local elites. This interpretation is also related to Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. Terms such as symbolic capital and habitus are used to give social meaning to the technology and its role, actively and metaphorically, in the reproduction of the Scandinavian Late Neolithic communities.
|
|
| 2. |
- Arwinge, Olof, 1971-
(author)
-
Internal Control : A study of concept and themes
- 2012
-
Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The concept of internal control has developed along with audit practice. As demands have been made for greater accountability in corporate governance, the significance of internal control systems in companies has increased. Traditionally internal control has had a fairly direct relationship to financial reporting quality but wider approaches to internal control have expanded those boundaries much further. Stakeholders are increasingly concerned with the effectiveness of internal controls, and disclosure requirements are making firms to go public with regard to their internal control systems. From a design perspective,current research suggests that internal control designs are contingent upon variables such as company strategies, risk appetite, regulatory characteristics, and organizational size. Also there is much to learn about internal control quality, and the way internal control quality is associated with overall corporate governance quality. This book fills that gap.
|
|
| 3. |
- Hallgren, Fredrik, 1968-
(author)
-
Identitet i praktik : Lokala, regionala och överregionala sociala sammanhang inom nordlig trattbägarkultur
- 2008
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis discusses the introduction of cultural practices such as cultivation, cattle herding, pottery craft and specific lithic traditions in the region around the Baltic Sea during the Stone Age. The main focus is on the Early Neolithic (4000-3300 cal. BC) Funnel Beaker Culture of Mälardalen and Bergslagen in eastern Central Sweden. Archaeological material from neighbouring parts of Scandinavia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, northern Poland and northern Germany are also included in the discussion. The thesis does not attempt to explain why practices like agriculture and ceramic production were introduced, rather it discusses when and how they took place. The archaeological material is discussed as remains of activities like living, crafting, cultivating, herding – cultural practices that were created through participation and performance. It is argued that participation in these activities shaped aspects of the participants' identity.
|
|
| 4. |
- Lekberg, Per
(author)
-
Yxors liv, människors landskap : En studie av kulturlandskap och samhälle i Mellansveriges senneolitikum
- 2002
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis deals with the social situation of Late Neolithic society, as it can be studied in the contextual formation and the accumulation of wealth in the Late Neolithic landscape of Central Sweden (c. 2350-1700 cal. BC). I claim that Scandinavian hammer axes of this period (in Scandinavian archaeology traditionally referred to as ‘simple shaft-hole axes’) exhibit traits of context-dependent differences and morphologically identifiable value relativity. Hence, they are capable of disclosing a landscape of contexts, action spheres and dispersal of value when mapped. The studies show that there is an unequal distribution of wealth in the disguised cultural landscape of the stray finds, and the question is how, and in what context, this inequality should be understood. The value perspective is used as an aid in a discussion about center and periphery and accumulation of wealth in the cultural landscape and society of Late Neolithic Scandinavia, and a proposition as to the structures of power and contact in such a society. A wider European outlook seems to provide the hammer axes, as well as Scandinavian Late Neolithic society as a whole, with a Bronze Age context of pan-European contacts, possibly based upon earlier, Corded-Ware networks of interaction.
|
|
| 5. |
- Lindgren, Christina, 1959-
(author)
-
Människor och kvarts : sociala och teknologiska strategier under mesolitikum i östra Mellansverige
- 2004
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis deals with the social dimension in lithic technology during the Mesoltihic in eastern central Sweden. The starting point is the empirical observation of the disappearing bipolar-on-anvil method of reduction around 4500 BC. This method of reduction is often used on quartz and it is the dominant method of reduction at Stone Age sites dated to the period before 4500 BC. It subsequently almost disappears without any sign of technological innovation at the time. Several other changes in the Mesolithic society occur at this time; the large aggregation sites disappear and contact with other areas changes. All this points to that the technological change is only one indication of more profound changes in the organisation and structuring of the society at this time. By looking at technology as a practice, it can be related to the social communications and negotiations that occur between different people. Tool making is seen as an arena where people of different gender and age are engaged. Lithic technology has a strong performative character that is an important part in the constant communications of social identities. This performative character is expressed at the knapping floors. The knapping floors are analyzed spatially and with a fracture analysis. The method of fracture analysis is developed as a result of experimental knapping. The result of the analysis of knapping floors from seven Mesolithic sites indicate that there is a contradiction between on the one hand organizing tool production in different strategies, as a result of different social groups being engaged in the making of quartz tools, and on the other hand, the spatially structuration of knapping floors where all stone working is located in one place. This contradiction is seen as an example of the duality of action and structure. By spatially organising the knapping floors as places where people met, they were given a purpose as a levelling device in an egalitarian structure. The disappearance of the bipolar-on-anvil method of reduction around 4500 BC is only a small symbol of more profound changes in the social structure in the Mesolithic society, changes in the way people percieved their world and themselves.
|
|
| 6. |
- Sjögren, Karl-Göran, 1949
(author)
-
Mångfalldige uhrminnes grafvar..... Megaliter och samhälle i Västsverige.
- 2003
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis discusses the social, economic and ideological setting in which megalithic tombs were produced in western Sweden in the time period c. 4700-4500 BP. In this short time, some 80 tombs were built in Bohuslän and more than 250 in Falbygden in Västergötland, while no tombs were built in other areas of western Sweden. Available evidence, although limited, suggests that the middle Neolithic societies behind the megaliths were fully agrarian, with only marginal importance of hunting, fishing and collecting. It is argued that the Neolithic lifestyle was of more than just economic importance. It was charged with symbolic and ideological values, something which led the megalithic societies to focus on them in the face of varying environments, sometimes adverse to agrarian practices. This occurs most strikingly in the coastal landscape of Bohuslän, where marine hunting and fishing seems only to have been marginal. This focus on agrarian practices implies that important resources in the environments were left un- or underused. Such a situation can hardly be explained as functional adaptation to the environment, but must be seen as an ideological emphasis on a certain lifestyle, of which domestic resources were an important part. Also, theories of resource pressure or overpopulation as explanations of the megalithic phenomenon are severely weakened. Based on spatial distribution of tombs and flint axes, compared to numbers of burials and necessary work forces for the construction of tombs, it is argued that megalith building societies were structured on a number of levels. Local groups, presumably lineage based, formed parts of more inclusive social networks, at successively larger scales. Thus, Falbygden is interpreted as a separate ethnicity, comprising a number of clans or other subgroups, each formed by a number of local groups. Another line of argument concerns the structuring of landscape. It is argued that landscape was structured at a basic, practical level, with daily activities spatially separated, but that it also contains conceptual schemes, series of categorisations and distinctions. Such categories could for instance involve domestic vs. wild, daily vs. ceremonial, or living vs. dead ancestors. In daily practices, such schemes are experienced and learned as a basis for common sense knowledge. By the construction of monuments for the dead at certain places, these places as well as the surrounding landscape will acquire new and enhanced connotations. It is argued that megalithic tombs were placed at the margins of cultivated land, thus emphasizing the distinction between domestic and non-domestic contexts. The liminality of the tombs as places for connecting with the dead is then paralleled and emphasized by the liminal position in the landscape. It is suggested that ritualisation of social relations involving passage rites is accompanied by increasing ritualisation of spatial passages and spatial distinctions, in a process reaching a high point in the early middle Neolithic.
|
|
| 7. |
- Sundström, Lars, 1967-
(author)
-
Det hotade kollektivet : Neolitiseringsprocessen ur ett östmellansvenskt perspektiv
- 2003
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation questions the established view on the social process in connection with Neolithisation. Therefore it has been necessary to discuss more general principles, on how to understand this process of change, when iterant hunter-gatherers became settled farmers. The dissertation begins with a theoretical discussion on the foundations for the interpretation and most important a discussion on differences between the interpretations presented and the treatment of the empirical material on which they are based. A necessary point of departure for understanding the implications an incorporation of domesticates in prehistoric society, i.e. emergence of Funnel Beaker Culture in Sweden, is a principal discussion, social mechanisms of hunters-gatherers on one hand and peoples reactions to changes threatening the social ideology, on the other. Four case studies are used to discuss people’s reaction to change. They clearly indicate that the reaction involved the lifting up of blurred and semiconscious structures to a conscious, ideological level. Inherent in this awareness process has been an active use of material culture, both in the production of symbols and in communication. The most important reason for stating that the Neolithisation must have meant a clear break with the earlier existence is the abandonment of itinerant way of life, both geographically and socially. This abandonment resulted in reactionary process involving material culture. Thus the material culture of the Funnel-Beaker period can be perceived as instruments of reproduction of a historically well-anchored egalitarian ideology. In the dispersed settlement system of autonomous individual farmsteads the collective aggregation sites are given a focal role of the discussion on social reproduction. The social mechanisms of the Early Neolithic society of Eastern Central Sweden are investigated on a local settlement level by an analysis of the production of locally available raw material. This study involve a petrological investigation showed a system of local management in relation to raw material extraction, production and consumption. This system is considered as one way of upholding the social ideology historically situated in the life style of hunters and gatherers.
|
|
| 8. |
- Johansson, Per
(author)
-
The Lure of Origins : An Inquiry into Human-Environmental Relations, Focused on the ”Neolithization” of Sweden
- 2003
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the discussion of the deeper meaning, in our contemporary context, of the ”neolithization” of Sweden. The basis for the investigation is twofold: * a critical examination of recent research reports dealing mostly with the Early Neolithic of (Middle) Sweden which shows, inter alia, that ”agriculture” was of marginal importance for a very long time from about 4000 BC onwards, while, at the same time, the idea of ”the transition to farming” dominates discourse. This paradox is then confronted with * a critical and constructive study of certain ideas (notably those of Tim Ingold, Jakob von Uexküll, and so-called activity theory) on the nature of human/environmental relations, focusing on three kinds of human-environment relationships: human organisms and biological environments, human persons and artifacts, and human beings and other beings in the context of symbolism. The dissertation is written from the point of view of how the archaeological discussion can be read outside of the direct purview of archaeology itself. The ”neolithization” issue, in other words, is not primarily discussed in the terms of its regular (specialized) disciplinary context, but rather in terms of a discussion on the nature of human being in various environmental contexts. The work is, consequently, largely philosophical and theoretical.
|
|
