'Body-objects' and personhood in the Iron and Viking Ages: processing, curating, and depositing skulls in domestic space

This article explores practices of processing, displaying, and depositing human and animal crania in built environments and wetlands in the long Iron Age of Scandinavia. The paper first reports on a dataset of a range of practices targeting heads over the first millennium CE, with a particular focus...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:World archaeology 2020-01, Vol.52 (1), p.103-119
Main Author: Eriksen, Marianne Hem
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
atmosphere
body-objects
deposition
Heads
Iron Age
Personhood
place-making
Wetlands
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Summary:This article explores practices of processing, displaying, and depositing human and animal crania in built environments and wetlands in the long Iron Age of Scandinavia. The paper first reports on a dataset of a range of practices targeting heads over the first millennium CE, with a particular focus on deposition of crania in built environments. I subsequently present a two-fold analysis of these data: an exploration of how reworking bodies into cranial objects transformed personhood in complex ways, and a discussion of how the particular practices afforded to the head connects with practices of placemaking and atmospheric intervention. I consider reworked, displayed and deposited heads as 'body-objects' - a different kind of being than 'person', 'animal' or 'thing' that breaks open some existing assumptions of the constitution of bodies and persons in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia.
ISSN:0043-8243
1470-1375
DOI:10.1080/00438243.2019.1741439