Materials of Affect: Miniatures in the Scandinavian Late Iron Age (AD 550-1050)

Danielsson, Ing-Marie Back

doi:10.4324/9781315434254-16

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Furthermore, it facilitates disentangling taphonomic effects from intentional manipulation of the burnt bones after cremation. This helps to avoid over-interpreting the data as in the archaeological context a small cremation weight is often seen as evidence for pars-pro-toto [112]. The two urns discussed in this paper provide insights into the Bronze Age at the human scale, tracing each step of the burial ritual.…”

Section: Funerary Ritualsmentioning

confidence: 87%

More than urns: A multi-method pipeline for analyzing cremation burials

Waltenberger,

Bosch,

Fritzl

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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Burial rites of archaeological populations are frequently interpreted based on cremated remains of the human body and the urn they were deposited in. In comparison to inhumations, information about the deceased is much more limited and dependent on fragmentation, selection of body regions, taphonomic processes, and excavation techniques. So far, little attention has been paid to the context in which urns are buried. In this study, we combined archaeological techniques with anthropology, computed tomography, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, geochemistry and isotopic approaches and conducted a detailed analysis on a case study of two Late Bronze Age urns from St. Pölten, Austria (c. 1430 and 1260 cal. BCE). The urns were recovered en-bloc and CT-scanned before the micro-excavation. Osteological and strontium isotope analysis revealed that the cremated remains comprised a young adult female and a child that died at the age of 10–12 years. Both individuals had been subject to physiological stress and were likely local. Animal bones burnt at different temperatures suggested different depositional pathways into the urn and pit as part of the pyre, food offerings, and unintentional settlement debris. Eight wild plant and five crop plant species appeared as part of the local landscape, as food offerings and fire accelerants. Sediment chemistry suggests that pyre remains were deposited around the urns during burial. Multi-element geochemistry, archaeobotany, and zooarchaeology provide insights into the Late Bronze Age environment, the process of cremation, the gathering of bones and final funerary deposition.

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Section: Funerary Ritualsmentioning

confidence: 87%

More than urns: A multi-method pipeline for analyzing cremation burials

Waltenberger,

Bosch,

Fritzl

et al. 2023

PLoS ONE

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“…In Viking archaeology, to decentre the human as the universal protagonist is not mainstream, yet is bubbling under the surface of contemporary scholarship. The notion of universal anthropocentric personhood in the Viking Age is currently being challenged, for instance through questioning whether we can assume that children were universally cherished social persons in first millennium CE Northern Europe (Eriksen 2017); whether ritually modified artefacts in Viking burial may have had aspects of personhood (Ratican forthcoming); and whether certain objects -such as the gold foil figures -were ontological equivalents to (some) humans (Back Danielsson 2013). Recently, Eriksen and Kay (2022) explicitly argue that the lines between humans and the other (whether building, sword, or animal) cannot be assumed to be drawn in the same way as in the present West, and that Iron and Viking-Age worlds were decidedly more-than-human, in unfamiliar ways.…”

Section: Multispecies Archaeology and The More-than-human Worlds Of T...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Multispecies Vikings: Animals, people, and cyborgs in the Late Iron and Viking Ages

Eriksen¹,

Ratican²

2023

Preprint

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Several stimulating studies over the last decades have shown how animals played a major role in Viking ritual practice and cosmology. Simultaneously, social theory has moved leaps and bounds in decentring humans as the default masters of the world, rather accepting that the world is and always has been more-than-human. Recent turns to animals, multispecies archaeology and post-anthropocentrism provide powerful new thinking tools that cast many of our assumptions about the world in a radically new light. This chapter approaches the role of animals in the Viking Age anew through case studies of animals in burial and animals in ritual deposition in settlements. Are these animal bodies straightforward expressions of 'property', 'wealth' or 'sacrifice'? How do we approach past practices that do not fit our preconceived categories and notions?

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“…, 2012, argues that miniature clay pots of La Candelaria, from first-millennium-AD Argentina, do not have size as a measure of scale, but rather that intensity of decoration offers a measure of scale, and continuous variations may occur. In her studies of miniature gold foil figures of Late Iron Age Scandinavia, Back Danielsson (2012Danielsson ( , 2013 has stressed that the very concept of miniature is delimiting as it reinforces representationalism, and denies the figures the possibility of being objects in their own right. Scale must thus be seen as something that cannot be taken for granted, but rather as something that has the potential of generating affect and relationships of varying intensities.…”

Section: Relational Corporeality and Affectivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Affective Interventions and ‘the Hegemonic Other’ in Runestones from Västergötland and Södermanland, Sweden

Arwill-Nordbladh

Daniellson

2021

csa

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In the eleventh century AD, the Scandinavian countries were in the final stage of the process of conversion to Christianity. Local and regional processes of negotiations towards a Christian hegemony took various courses in different parts of Scandinavia. There are few substantial indications that social tensions resulted in violence. Rather, archaeological evidence indicates a gradual change. This paper highlights how these processes of negotiations were expressed by counter-hegemonic groups that took advantage of the affective affordances of runestones. By raising specific runestones, these non-Christian groups were part of an agonistic political process, as described by the political philosopher Chantal Mouffe.

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Materials of Affect: Miniatures in the Scandinavian Late Iron Age (AD 550-1050)

Cited by 5 publications

References 10 publications

More than urns: A multi-method pipeline for analyzing cremation burials

More than urns: A multi-method pipeline for analyzing cremation burials

Multispecies Vikings: Animals, people, and cyborgs in the Late Iron and Viking Ages

Affective Interventions and ‘the Hegemonic Other’ in Runestones from Västergötland and Södermanland, Sweden

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