Bronze Age Talk on Saturday

Posted by Martin R on September 15, 2010
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i-d2d9cfcbfffb2246347bf5805f5b2a12-Pukberget spjutspets.jpgI’m giving a talk at the Stockholm County Museum in Sickla, Saturday at two o’clock, as part of a day seminar. The subject will be my on-going research into Bronze Age sacrificial sites, where I collaborate with the museum on fieldwork. Aard readers are welcome: just tell the organisers that I’m your estranged dad. And do say hi to me!

I’m a little nervous, though, as I’ve found out that I’m on immediately after a talk by my old coursemate Dr. Susanne Thedéen, a Bronze Age specialist, who is going to talk about pretty much the same theme! I try to console myself with the fact that she gave a talk about one of the subjects of my thesis last week, burial ritual and gender on Viking Period Gotland. But maybe she did that better than I would too? Anyway, after the seminar I’ll flee with Junior to the Stockholm Gaming Convention and drown my sorrows in boardgames. Any Dear Readers going there too?

The spearhead right dates from about 700 BC and was found in the Pukberget cave in Uppland.

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  1. #1 Birger Johansson
    September 15, 2010

    Good luck! BTW The bronze-age people around here must have had a hard time to find dramatic sites suitable for sacrifices (It would have been easier in places with more “dynamic” landscapes featuring volcanoes or deep caves).
    Now, if only they had had a consistent rule about depositing organic stuff in oxygen-poor peat bogs, then things would have been great for archaeologists.

    A question: -If the rules for sacrifice deposition were consistent, would this not have made things easy for bronze-age thieves?

  2. #2 Martin R
    September 15, 2010

    Thanks!

    There is evidence of grave robbery in the Bronze Age, but most sacrificial sites would have been difficult to loot because they were in lakes and rivers. People used to find the sacrificed objects about AD 1900 when dredging rivers and reclaiming silted-up ancient lake basins (i.e. bogs) as farmland. Neither activity is likely to have taken place in Prehistory.