Johnny Karlsson Spill: Om djur, hantverk och nätverk i mälarområdet under vikingatid och medeltid
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: JohnnyKarlsson's dissertation in osteoarchaeology (English title, Waste: Osseous Materials, Crafts, and Networks in the Region of Lake Mälaren in the Middle Ages), is an ambitious and determined attempt to use material culture to gain insight into medieval life.The category of artefacts selec ted is special: bone and antler objects were analyzed within the technological context of their raw material waste.This monograph therefore is emphatically multidisciplinary, exploring various aspects of medieval bone manufacturing in central Sweden.Animal osseous materials include skeletal bone, tooth, and antler, referred to in general as 'bone' henceforth.Until the 1980s, the relatively few, highly worked bone objects found through excavation were treasured by archaeologists as bona fide archaeological artefacts, retained for stylistic/ typological studies.Attention was but rarely paid to the precise identification of their raw materials.A good example is the unmodified reindeer metacarpus from Sigtuna saved after the 1936 excavations as a putative ice skate (Karlsson 2016:69, figure 2.31).The bulk of refuse bone, on the other hand, was typically handed over to natural scientists (paleontolo-
Source: Current Swedish Archaeology
DOI: 10.37718/csa.2018.15
Author: László Bartosiewicz
Institution: Stockholm University
Language: Swedish
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W3168072032