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Images are created not in a vacuum but in hidden yet potent, contending political forces. The missionary endeavour of the nineteenth century was not exempt from this reality. Images became integral to missionary publications and shaped the metropolitan imagination regarding the colonised people, their religion, gods, and rituals. Displaying the colonies and their people was of utmost importance as

During the years of their colonial subjugation, the colonial subjects had gotten into themselves the seed of “inferiority complex”, which in turn made them feel that white skins are superior. This psychological trauma was so intense that they tend to run away from their own individuality by imbibing the traits of their own masters, inorder to be equal or to be accepted by the white community. This

This book offers an analysis of archaeological imagery based on new materialist approaches. Reassessing the representational paradigm of archaeological image analysis, it argues for the importance of ontology, redefining images as material processes or events that draw together differing aspects of the world. The book is divided into three sections: 'Emergent images', which focuses on practices of

Over the last few decades, a critical revision of prior scholarship concerning Roman domestic space has led to the reappraisal of the traditional account of the atrium suggesting a possibility for this space to be ‘unroofed’. Accordingly, scholars have proposed to look for a convergence of impulses previously cultivated in isolation combining new theoretical frameworks, and a careful examination o

In recent decades, studies of Roman domestic space have proliferated. The result is a rich but impenetrable picture, with scholars often favoring the use of ancient sources on one hand and finds from excavated houses or material remains on the other. Studies have emphasized how light can be approached to investigate space and its social meaning. At the same time, in the field of digital technologi

Interpreting the social complexity of the Roman house requires a careful evaluation of existing evidence. With this in mind, recent work in the field has proposed a variety of different approaches, focusing each time on a specific type of source (architecture and décor, ancient texts, material evidence from excavated houses), each in turn recursively deemed more adequate for the purpose or more fr

In the context of the massive refugee influx from Ukraine to its European neighbouring states over the last months, this update reflects on the experiences of two international exchanges led by HOUSE-IN: a JPI Urban Europe-funded project that deals with challenges at the housing-integration nexus. The exchanges revealed the impacts of this forced migration at the intersection of housing and integr

In the book’s introductory chapter long-held assumptions concerning archaeological art and images are addressed and challenged, particularly representationalism, and new ways to approach and understand them are offered. Specifically, it is argued that art and images continuously emerge in processes of making and engagement, both in the past and in the present. Hence, art and images are always in m

This paper discusses Late Iron Age gold foil figures from Scandinavia. The figures can be described as tiny humanoid beings stamped on very thin gold foil. They date to c. AD 550–800, and are commonly interpreted in representationalist ways, and as being symbols. By contrast, this paper starts from the assumption that art and imagery are simultaneously material, affective and emergent. As a conseq

This paper investigates the stories that unfold and are created after an excavation in 1990s in Sweden of a few Late Viking Age burials. The excavation is followed by excavation reports, articles and an exhibition that also showcases a reconstruction made of one of the buried persons. The analysis is made from three perspectives; from the archaeological, the museum and the municipality. It is demo

This themed journal issue provides many examples of ways forward in the study of death and memory in the Viking world. While all contributions demonstrate that there are exciting new ways to study remains from funerary contexts that focus on different forms of citation involving material culture and monuments, this article will very briefly discuss dimensions that have not been addressed here. Spe

This article discusses qualitative experiences (qualia) of Scandinavian Late Viking Age rune-stones from a semiotically theorized perspective. Rune-stones with kuml inscriptions receive particular attention. Despite the fact that kuml referred to different material entities, such as rune-stone, other standing stones, and/or grave, it is suggested that they resembled one another on iconic grounds.

The archaeological approach adopted in this work wishes to explore the mnemonic agency of rune-stones through highlighting some of the myriad rhizomatic relations that were generated through the embodied processes of making, staging and encountering rune-stones in the landscape. It equally emphasises that memory work is practical, performative and therefore necessarily embodied in its constitution

This contribution investigates possible material expressions of hetero- and homoerotic expressions on the holy island of Helgö and close-by Hundhamra from the Late Iron Age (c. 550-1050 CE).

This thesis explores bodily representations in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (400–1050 AD). Non-human bodies, such as gold foil figures, and human bodies are analysed. The work starts with an examination and deconstruction of the sex/gender categories to the effect that they are considered to be of minor value for the purposes of the thesis. Three analytical concepts – masks, miniature, and metaphor –

The majority of northern peatlands were initiated during the Holocene around8,000 to 12,000 years ago. Owing to their mass imbalance, they have sequestered huge amounts of organic carbon in the terrestrial ecosystem. The distribution of soil organic carbon is widespread and uneven across the pan-Arctic (45-75ºN latitude).Recent syntheses have filled some existing gaps, however, the extent and remo