Fredrik Fahlander
Biographic Data
| ID | 643633 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Fredrik Fahlander |
| GIVEN NAMES | Fredrik |
| FAMILY NAME | Fahlander |
| SIGNATURE | FAHLANDER F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stockholm University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3813-7374 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Natural Choice: Ontologies of Death and Burial between Faiths in Early Medieval Scandinavia
This study re-evaluates south Scandinavian burial practices during the early part of the Christianization period (tenth–eleventh centuries). By employing a bottom-up approach, we focus on the specific funerary practices rather than on teleological, top-down models of religion. We identified a significant shift from Viking Age grave goods (exotic, precious, personal objects with long and complex biographies) toward everyday, local and natural (bio…
A Step in Stone. Ontologies of Podomorphic Petroglyphs in Southern Scandinavian Bronze Age
During the Bronze Age, a particular type of podomorphic petroglyph was produced on the outcrops by the sea in southern Scandinavia. In this text, their distribution, organization and articulation are analyzed in the Mälaren region of central‐eastern Sweden. The study shows that the petroglyphs are organized in relation to water as well as to different minerals visible in the rock. This pattern indicates that they are not simply images or symbols …
In Sheep’s Clothing: Humans and Other-Than-Humans in Iron Age Cremation Assemblages in North Spånga, Sweden
This study investigates the potentially generative roles of animals in the cremation ritual through an in-depth study of an excavated Late Iron Age (c. 400-1050 BCE) grave-field in North Spånga, Sweden. The animal remains in this burial ground are generally of two categories: one comprises parts from several body regions, and one entails mainly fragments of the skull and lower extremities. Although there are general distinctions between animals o…
"Everything begins with a dot" cupmarks, minerals and waters in South Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art
Are We There Yet? Archaeology and the Postmodern in the New Millennium
The present text discusses the significance of the post- modern condition in contemporary archaeology. Five themes associated with postmodernism are discussed (a) the relativization of truth, knowledge, and mean- ing, (b) the fragmentation of the grand narrative, (c) the relation between agency and discourse, (d) plural- ism, multivocality, and heterogeneity, and (e) rhetoric and styles of writing. In contemporary debate it has been suggested tha…
The Materiality of the Ancient Dead – Post-burial Practices and Ontologies of Death in Southern Sweden AD 800–1200
This text discusses reuse and modifications of older graves in southern Sweden during the Late Iron Age and early medieval period (c. 9th to 12th centu- ries AD). Post-burial practices in the Late Iron Age have in general been interpreted as means to nego- tiate status, identity and rights to land, while in the later part of the period they are comprehended as expressions of religious insecurity and syncretism. In this text, the continuity of pos…
Introduction to The Changing Roles of Archaeology in Swedish Museums
Åsa Berggren: Med kärret som källa: Om begreppen offer och ritual inom arkeologin
Microarchaeology, Materiality and Social Practice
In this paper we propose an operative social theory that eliminates the need for a pre-defined regional context or spatio-temporal social entities like social system, culture, society or ethnic group. The archaeological object in a microarchaeological approach is not a closed and homogeneous social totality, but rather the structurating practices, the regulative actions operating in a field ofhumans and things. In order to address these issues mo…
Becoming Dead: Burial Assemblages as Vitalist Devices
This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that ‘become’ in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing e…
Petroglyphs as ‘contraptions’ – animacy and vitalist technologies in a Bronze Age archipelago
The text discusses the possibilities of Bronze Age petroglyphs working as vitalist contraptions produced to harvest or affect certain animacies in coastal milieus. As primarily magical devices, a wider range of properties of the petroglyphs becomes important besides their figurative and representational facets. For example, the mediality and physicality of the motifs, including aspects of size, embellishment, and symmetry, as well as relations be…
Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them ‒ Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art
The boat motif in Bronze Age rock art is generally assumed to represent real or symbolic boats in some form. In this paper, however, it is argued that Bronze Age rock art motifs are independent material articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. From such a perspective, the hybrid character of the boat motif as part animal, part object is conceived as a special type of entity, an object-being that has no original elsewhere. The…
The Relational Life of Trees. Ontological Aspects of “Tree-Ness” in the Early Bronze Age of Northern Europe
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 ontolo…
Nuances of What? Burials as Relational Configurations
Ontology Matters in Archaeology and Anthropology: People, Things, and Posthumanism
Articulating Relations: A Non-Representational View of Scandinavian Rock Art
This chapter develops thinking on the relational nature of reality by focusing on the issue of change and persistence. It argues that in rejecting a correspondence theory of truth, a host of different avenues for understanding time and archaeological research open up. The chapter argues that these avenues are fraught with paradoxes, but those paradoxes are productive and archaeologists are already adept at dealing with some of them because of our…
Intersecting Generations: Burying the Old in a Neolithic Hunter-fisher Community
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 Ne…
Mesolithic Childhoods: Changing Life-Courses of Young Hunter-Fishers in the Stone Age of Southern Scandinavia
This paper stresses the importance of distinguishing between different categories of children in order to better understand their changing lives and their shifting relations with the adult world. The example is taken from the Mesolithic burial/settlement site of Skateholm at the southernmost coast of Sweden. By contrasting grave content and spatial arrangement of the site it is argued that the inhabitants recognised differences between infants (<…
Messing with the dead: Post-depositional manipulations of burials and bodies in the South Scandinavian Stone Age
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 …
The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs
16 papers presented from an EAA session held at Krakow in 2006, exploring various aspects of the archaeology of death. Contents: Chapter 1. The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs (Fredrik Fahlander & Terje Oestigaard); Chapter 2. More than Metaphor: Approaching the Human Cadaver in Archaeology (Liv Nilsson Stutz); Chapter 3. A Piece of the Mesolithic. Horizontal Stratigraphy and Bodily Manipulations at Skateholm (Fredrik Fahlander); C…
Encounters | Materialities | Confrontations: Archaeologies of Social Space and Interaction
This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happen…
Microarchaeology, Materiality and Social Practice
In this paper we propose an operative social theory that eliminates the need for a pre-defined regional context or spatio-temporal social entities like social system, culture, society or ethnic group. The archaeological object in a microarchaeological approach is not a closed and homogeneous social totality, but rather the structurating practices, the regulative actions operating in a field ofhumans and things. In order to address these issues mo…
Mesolithic Childhoods: Changing Life-Courses of Young Hunter-Fishers in the Stone Age of Southern Scandinavia
This paper stresses the importance of distinguishing between different categories of children in order to better understand their changing lives and their shifting relations with the adult world. The example is taken from the Mesolithic burial/settlement site of Skateholm at the southernmost coast of Sweden. By contrasting grave content and spatial arrangement of the site it is argued that the inhabitants recognised differences between infants (<…
Becoming Dead: Burial Assemblages as Vitalist Devices
This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that ‘become’ in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing e…
Are We There Yet? Archaeology and the Postmodern in the New Millennium
The present text discusses the significance of the post- modern condition in contemporary archaeology. Five themes associated with postmodernism are discussed (a) the relativization of truth, knowledge, and mean- ing, (b) the fragmentation of the grand narrative, (c) the relation between agency and discourse, (d) plural- ism, multivocality, and heterogeneity, and (e) rhetoric and styles of writing. In contemporary debate it has been suggested tha…
The Relational Life of Trees. Ontological Aspects of “Tree-Ness” in the Early Bronze Age of Northern Europe
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 ontolo…
Intersecting Generations: Burying the Old in a Neolithic Hunter-fisher Community
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 Ne…
Introduction to The Changing Roles of Archaeology in Swedish Museums
Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them ‒ Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art
The boat motif in Bronze Age rock art is generally assumed to represent real or symbolic boats in some form. In this paper, however, it is argued that Bronze Age rock art motifs are independent material articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. From such a perspective, the hybrid character of the boat motif as part animal, part object is conceived as a special type of entity, an object-being that has no original elsewhere. The…
Nuances of What? Burials as Relational Configurations
Encounters | Materialities | Confrontations: Archaeologies of Social Space and Interaction
This collection of texts is a first step towards providing a theoretical and methodological platform for the study of social encounters. The social encounter is a particular sort of concept, focusing on confusion, tension, trauma, and possibly social change that may emerge in situations of contact when people and things interact. A social encounter is, however, not only about negotiation or contemplating existence, but is rather about what happen…
The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs
16 papers presented from an EAA session held at Krakow in 2006, exploring various aspects of the archaeology of death. Contents: Chapter 1. The Materiality of Death: Bodies, Burials, Beliefs (Fredrik Fahlander & Terje Oestigaard); Chapter 2. More than Metaphor: Approaching the Human Cadaver in Archaeology (Liv Nilsson Stutz); Chapter 3. A Piece of the Mesolithic. Horizontal Stratigraphy and Bodily Manipulations at Skateholm (Fredrik Fahlander); C…
Messing with the dead: Post-depositional manipulations of burials and bodies in the South Scandinavian Stone Age
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 …
Mesolithic Childhoods: Changing Life-Courses of Young Hunter-Fishers in the Stone Age of Southern Scandinavia
This paper stresses the importance of distinguishing between different categories of children in order to better understand their changing lives and their shifting relations with the adult world. The example is taken from the Mesolithic burial/settlement site of Skateholm at the southernmost coast of Sweden. By contrasting grave content and spatial arrangement of the site it is argued that the inhabitants recognised differences between infants (<…
Intersecting Generations: Burying the Old in a Neolithic Hunter-fisher Community
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 Ne…
Articulating Relations: A Non-Representational View of Scandinavian Rock Art
This chapter develops thinking on the relational nature of reality by focusing on the issue of change and persistence. It argues that in rejecting a correspondence theory of truth, a host of different avenues for understanding time and archaeological research open up. The chapter argues that these avenues are fraught with paradoxes, but those paradoxes are productive and archaeologists are already adept at dealing with some of them because of our…
Ontology Matters in Archaeology and Anthropology: People, Things, and Posthumanism
The Relational Life of Trees. Ontological Aspects of “Tree-Ness” in the Early Bronze Age of Northern Europe
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 ontolo…
Nuances of What? Burials as Relational Configurations
Petroglyphs as ‘contraptions’ – animacy and vitalist technologies in a Bronze Age archipelago
The text discusses the possibilities of Bronze Age petroglyphs working as vitalist contraptions produced to harvest or affect certain animacies in coastal milieus. As primarily magical devices, a wider range of properties of the petroglyphs becomes important besides their figurative and representational facets. For example, the mediality and physicality of the motifs, including aspects of size, embellishment, and symmetry, as well as relations be…
Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them ‒ Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art
The boat motif in Bronze Age rock art is generally assumed to represent real or symbolic boats in some form. In this paper, however, it is argued that Bronze Age rock art motifs are independent material articulations, made to do something rather than to represent. From such a perspective, the hybrid character of the boat motif as part animal, part object is conceived as a special type of entity, an object-being that has no original elsewhere. The…
Becoming Dead: Burial Assemblages as Vitalist Devices
This text comprises a critical discussion of assemblage theory and its application to burial studies. In recent research, burials have been viewed as fluid and indeterminate assemblages that ‘become’ in varied ways depending on different perceptions (concepts and ideas) and apparatuses (e.g. excavation tools and measuring instruments). The past and the present are thus mixed in potentially ever-new configurations which run the risk of replacing e…
Are We There Yet? Archaeology and the Postmodern in the New Millennium
The present text discusses the significance of the post- modern condition in contemporary archaeology. Five themes associated with postmodernism are discussed (a) the relativization of truth, knowledge, and mean- ing, (b) the fragmentation of the grand narrative, (c) the relation between agency and discourse, (d) plural- ism, multivocality, and heterogeneity, and (e) rhetoric and styles of writing. In contemporary debate it has been suggested tha…
The Materiality of the Ancient Dead – Post-burial Practices and Ontologies of Death in Southern Sweden AD 800–1200
This text discusses reuse and modifications of older graves in southern Sweden during the Late Iron Age and early medieval period (c. 9th to 12th centu- ries AD). Post-burial practices in the Late Iron Age have in general been interpreted as means to nego- tiate status, identity and rights to land, while in the later part of the period they are comprehended as expressions of religious insecurity and syncretism. In this text, the continuity of pos…
Introduction to The Changing Roles of Archaeology in Swedish Museums
Åsa Berggren: Med kärret som källa: Om begreppen offer och ritual inom arkeologin
Microarchaeology, Materiality and Social Practice
In this paper we propose an operative social theory that eliminates the need for a pre-defined regional context or spatio-temporal social entities like social system, culture, society or ethnic group. The archaeological object in a microarchaeological approach is not a closed and homogeneous social totality, but rather the structurating practices, the regulative actions operating in a field ofhumans and things. In order to address these issues mo…
In Sheep’s Clothing: Humans and Other-Than-Humans in Iron Age Cremation Assemblages in North Spånga, Sweden
This study investigates the potentially generative roles of animals in the cremation ritual through an in-depth study of an excavated Late Iron Age (c. 400-1050 BCE) grave-field in North Spånga, Sweden. The animal remains in this burial ground are generally of two categories: one comprises parts from several body regions, and one entails mainly fragments of the skull and lower extremities. Although there are general distinctions between animals o…
"Everything begins with a dot" cupmarks, minerals and waters in South Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art
A Natural Choice: Ontologies of Death and Burial between Faiths in Early Medieval Scandinavia
This study re-evaluates south Scandinavian burial practices during the early part of the Christianization period (tenth–eleventh centuries). By employing a bottom-up approach, we focus on the specific funerary practices rather than on teleological, top-down models of religion. We identified a significant shift from Viking Age grave goods (exotic, precious, personal objects with long and complex biographies) toward everyday, local and natural (bio…
A Step in Stone. Ontologies of Podomorphic Petroglyphs in Southern Scandinavian Bronze Age
During the Bronze Age, a particular type of podomorphic petroglyph was produced on the outcrops by the sea in southern Scandinavia. In this text, their distribution, organization and articulation are analyzed in the Mälaren region of central‐eastern Sweden. The study shows that the petroglyphs are organized in relation to water as well as to different minerals visible in the rock. This pattern indicates that they are not simply images or symbols …
History (15 works) · Archaeology (14 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (11 works) · Art (9 works) · Aesthetics (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · History (8 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (7 works) · Sociology (7 works)