Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
d
e
r
m
a
n
l
a
n
d
a
n
d
U
p
p
l
a
n
d
.
A
n
e
x
p
l
o
r
a
t
o
r
y
s
a
m
p
l
e
.
166
MARTIN RUNDKVIST
Distances
Addressing the relationship between the nine
studied sites and neighbouring rock art and
settlement sites (cf. tab. 1) is complicated
due to uncertain data coverage. Finding rock
art is a time-consuming specialised task: any
distribution map will always say something
about where skilled surveyors have been in
addition to about where the rock art is. Still,
it is worth noting that the distance between
sacriicial site and rock art correlates with the
distance between sacriicial site and seashore.
This suggests that either a) surveyors have
preferred to look for rock art near the Bronze
Age sea shore, or b) the data coverage for rock
art is roughly even across the region. As for the
settlement sites, indicated by burnt mounds, it
appears that the surveyors of the Swedish sites
and monuments register were highly skilled
at identifying them when situated alone or in
groups. But picking out a burnt mound or two
at a Bronze Age settlement site that has become
overlaid by one of the regions ubiquitous Late
Iron Age mound cemeteries is of course vastly
harder.
Looking at our little data set, it is
worth noting that the median distances from
sacriicial site to burnt mound, rock art and
seashore are almost the same: 1.2 km, 1.4 km
and 1.5 km. This not because the three have
any tendency to close co-location at the stud-
ied sites. Instead I would suggest that when
people selected a sacriicial site, it had to be
part of the same contiguous sightlined land-
scape room as their home, but not be located
too close to the other three categories. To some
extent this would happen automatically since
neither burnt mounds, rock art nor the seashore
can exist in the freshwater wetland locations
favoured for sacriice.
If with a larger database we can con-
irm that known sacriicial sites do indeed pre-
fer a location 1.21.5 km from burnt mounds,
rock art and the coeval seashore, then the ques-
tion we must ask is, to what extent does it work
the other way around? There are many wetland
locations that fulil those criteria. In most cases
we have no idea what is hidden there. Would
it really be necessary to drain and trial-trench
tens or hundreds of wetlands to ind an an-
swer?
Conclusions
The work in progress I have outlined in this
paper concerns landscape studies of Bronze
Age sacriicial sites in the Lake Mlaren
provinces of Sweden. The projects goals are
twofold: a) to understand the landscape rules
behind the siting of deposits, and thereby b)
to develop a predictive model that allows
scholars to ind undisturbed Bronze Age
deposits without the aid of farmers, dredgers
or ditch diggers.
At the moment of writing, I have
looked at sites in Uppland and Sdermanland
provinces. (Vstmanland and Nrke are also
on my agenda, though inds are more scarce
there.) After closer study of nine sites in the
ield and numerous ones in the archives, I have
found that the Bronze Age people under study
preferred to make sacriices at wet, high, topo-
graphically dramatic and ancestral locations.
There are inds from bogs and white-water riv-
er gorges, hilltops, a cave and a settlement-site
that had once been important. In the rare dry-
land deposit locations, eye-catching boulders
were sought out.
Known sacriicial sites appear to pre-
fer a location 1.21.5 km from settlement-in-
dicating burnt mounds, rock art and the coeval
seashore. This means that sacriicial sites are
typically part of the same contiguous sight-
lined landscape room as the home settlement
of the people who frequented them.
*
A shorter version in Swedish of this paper
has been published as Rundkvist 2011.
167
GODS OF HIGH PLACES AND DEEP ROMANTIC CHASMS
References
Arnoldussen, S. & Fontijn, D. 2006. Towards familiar land-
scapes? On the nature and origin of Middle Bronze
Age landscapes in the Netherlands. Proceedings of
the Prehistoric Society 72, pp. 289317.
Arwidsson, G. 1939. Bronsldersfyndet frn Domta vad
i sterunda socken. Upplands fornminnesfrenings
tidskrift 1939, pp. 6580.
Baudou, E. 1960. Die regionale und chronologische
Einteilung der jngeren Bron zezeit im Nordischen
Kreis. Stock holm.
Beckman-Thoor, K. 2002. Skogstorpsyxorna. En frestll-
ning tar sin brjan. Kulturell mngfald i Sdermanland
1. (Ed. A. kerlund.) Nykping. Pp. 4551.
Berggren, . 2009. Offerbegreppet i arkeologin tolk-
ningar och perspektiv. Jrnlderns rituella platser.
(Ed. A. Carlie.) Halmstad. Pp. 3349.
Berggren, . 2010. Med krret som klla. Om begreppen
offer och ritual i arkeologin. Lund.
Bklin, L. 1961. Tckhammar. Srmlandsbygden 1961.
Pp. 2734.
Borna-Ahl kvist, H. 2002. Hllristarnas hem.
Grdsbebyggelse och struktur i Pryssgrden under
bronslder. Stockholm.
Bradley, R. 1998. The passage of arms. An archaeologi-
cal analysis of prehistoric hoards and votive deposits.
2nd ed. Oxford.
Bradley, R. 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places.
London.
Bradley, R. 2005. Ritual and Domestic Life in Prehistoric
Europe. London & New York.
Brck, J. 2001. Body metaphors and technologies of
transformation in the English Middle and Late Bronze
Age. (Ed. J. Brck.) Bronze Age landscapes: tradition
and transformation. Oxford. Pp. 149160.
Damell, D. 1985. Bronslder i Sdermanland. Nykping.
Damell, D. 1999. Hyndevad. Frn bergslag och bonde-
bygd 1999. Pp. 2737.
Ekholm, G. 1919. Upplndska depfynd frn bronsldern.
Upplands fornminnesfrenings tidskrift, Vol. 8, No 3:
197202.
Ekholm, G. 1921. Studier i Upplands bebyggelsehistoria.
II Bronsldern. Uppsala.
Fleming, A. 1999. Phenomenology and the megaliths
of Wales: a dreaming too far? Oxford Journal of
Archaeology, Vol. 18: 119125.
Fleming, A. 2006. Post-processual landscape archaeology:
a critique. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, Vol.
16, No 3: 267280.
Fleming, A. 2007. Dont bin your boots! Landscapes, Vol.
8, No 1: 8599.
Floderus, E. 1946. Pukeberget i sterunda. Uppland 1946,
pp. 721.
Fontijn, D. 2002. Sacriicial landscapes. Cultural biogra-
phies of persons, objects and natural places in the
Bronze Age of the southern Netherlands, c. 2300600
BC. Leiden.
Fontijn, D. 2007. The signiicance of invisible places.
World Archaeology, Vol. 39: 7083.
Forsgren, M. 2007. Depfyndet frn Hrnevi. D. 1,
Fremlsfrstelse och genusperspektiv med ut-
gngspunkt frn ett s.k. skrotfynd frn yngre brons-
lder i Uppland. Photocopied BA thesis. Stockholm.
Forsgren, M. 2008. Depfyndet frn Hrnevi. D. 2,
Sammanhang och frstelse av en fragmente-
rad bronsdep i torrmark frn yngre bronslder i
Uppland. Photocopied MA thesis. Stockholm.
Forsman, C. & Victor, H. 2007. Sommarnge skog.
Begravningar, ritualer och bebyggelse frn senneoli-
tikum, bronslder och folkvandringstid. Uppsala.
Hauptman Wahlgren, K. 2002. Bilder av betydelse.
Hllristningar och bronsl derslandskap i nordstra
stergtland. Lindome.
Huth, C. 2009. Ansichtssachen. Sptbronze- und wiking-
erzeitliche Schatzfunde und ihre wissenschaftliche
Deutung. Historia archaeologica. Festschrift fr
Heiko Steuer zum 70. Geburtstag. (Eds. S. Brather et
al.) Berlin. Pp. 4154.
Johansen, B. 1993. Skrvstenshgar och srmlndsk
bronslder. Arkeologi i Sverige, Vol. 2: 99118.
Karlenby, L. 1998. Ett arkeologiskt terbesk i Lilla
Hrnevi : arkeologisk slutunderskning, Lilla
Hrnevi 1:5, RA 35, Hrnevi socken, Enkpings
kommun, Uppland. Uppsala.
Karsten, P. 1994. Att kasta yxan i sjn. Lund.
Kjelln, E. & Hyenstrand, . 1977. Hllristningar och
bronslderssamhlle i sydvstra Uppland. Uppsala.
Kyriakidis, E. (ed.). 2007. The archaeology of ritual. Los
Angeles.
Levy, J.E. 1982. Social and religious organization in
Bronze Age Denmark. An analysis of ritual hoard
inds. Oxford.
Malmer, M.P. 2002. The Neolithic of south Sweden. TRB,
GRK, and STR. Stockholm.
Needham, S. 2001. When expediency broaches ritual in-
tention: the low of metal between systemic and bur-
ied domains. Journal of the Royal Anthropological
Institute incorporating Man, Vol. 7: 275298.
Olausson, M. 1995. Det inneslutna rummet. Om kultiska
hgnader, fornborgar och befsta grdar i Uppland
frn 1300 f Kr till Kristi fdelse. Stockholm.
Oldeberg, A. 197476. Die ltere Metall zeit in Schweden
12. Stockholm.
168
MARTIN RUNDKVIST
Ra. Site number by parish in the National Heritage
Boards sites-and-monuments register for Sweden.
Rundkvist, M. 2008. Fr en liberalisering av de svenska
metallskarreglerna. Fornvnnen, Vol. 103: 118122.
Rundkvist, M. 2011. I landskapet och mellan vrldarna.
En inledande studie av bron s lderns offerplatser i
Mlaromrdet. Bronslder. Bronslder i Stockholms
ln aktuell forskning. Rap port frn ett seminarium
2010. (Eds. K. Andersson et al.) Nacka.
Runefelt, L. (ed.). 2008. Svensk mosskultur. Odling, tor-
vanvndning och landskapets frndring 17502000.
Stockholm.
SHM. Inventory numbers in the National Historical
Museum, Stockholm.
Theden, S. 2004. Grnser i livet grnser i landskapet.
Generationsrelationer och rituella praktiker i sder-
manlndska bronslderslandskap. Stockholm.
Tilley, C. 1994. A phenomenology of landscape. Places,
paths, and monuments. Oxford.
Tilley, C. 2010. Interpreting landscapes. Geologies, to-
pographies, identities. Walnut Creek.
Ulln, I. 1997. Bronsldersboplatsen vid Apalle i Uppland.
Uppsala.
Victor, H. 2002. Med graven som granne. Om bronsl-
derns kulthus. Uppsala.
Wigren, S. 1987. Srmlndsk bronsldersbygd. En studie
av tidiga centrumbildningar daterade med termolu-
miniscens. Stockholm.
Zachrisson, T. 2004. Hyndevadsfallet och den kulturella
mngfalden. Om depositioner i strmmande vatten i
Sdermanland. Kulturell mngfald i Sdermanland 2.
(Ed. A. kerlund). Nykping. Pp. 1833.