‘Body-objects’ and personhood in the Iron and Viking Ages: processing, curating, and depositing skulls in domestic space
Year: 2020
Type: article
Abstract: 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.
Source: World Archaeology
Author: Marianne Hem Eriksen
Institution: University of Oslo
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Norges Forskningsråd
Award: G1127969255
OpenAlex ID: W3018499092