This article explores the potential of studying the social dimensions of old age and aged bodies in the past. Because old age is relative to life-expectancy figures, diet and lifestyle, calendric years are avoided when defining old age. Instead a composite approach is advocated that includes, for example, traces of wear and joint diseases to identify a threshold between adulthood and a period of seniority. The approach is applied to the Middle Neolithic burial ground Ajvide on the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. Eleven individuals (six men, five women, or 18 per cent of the 62 analysed burials) are regarded as 'aged bodies'. At Ajvide a majority of these individuals are buried in graves that overlap earlier burials containing younger individuals of the same sex. It is argued that this pattern is due to eschatological ideas of 'generational merging' of bodies. This practice changes over time, which is suggested to be a part of the overall hybridization processes at the site.

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This paper concerns post-depositional manipulations of burials at two Stone Age sites in Southern Sweden: the Late Mesolithic Skateholm and Middle Neolithic Ajvide. A distinction is made between non-aggressive and aggressive manipulations of graves and dead bodies. Fine-grained horizontal stratigraphies make it possible to associate each category with different phases of occupation. It is suggested that aggressive manipulations are generally the result of social stress during periods of hybridisation between different groups and traditions.

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-ness 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.

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