This essay discusses the width of the Late medieval desertion of farms in Sweden from an archaeological perspective. The object of the essay is to investigate if archaeological investigations and research during the last 10-15 years have changed the view of the Late medieval desertion in relation to the Scandinavian research project on deserted farms and villages.The essay also deals with questions on causes to the desertion and when desertion occurred. An ambition of the essay is also to give a general picture of archaeological investigations during the last 10-15 years considering the Late medieval desertion. The analyses-material consists mainly of reports from archaeological investigations.Most of the investigations analysed in this essay are investigations of single farms. Because of this it is natural these investigations do not say much about the width of the desertion.

This thesis rewievs present day research on the settlement of Östra Aros in central Sweden. The thesis deals with the period from late Iron age to about 1270 AD, when the Swedish archdiocese moved to the already existing early-medieval settlement of Östra Aros, thus becoming the medieval town of Uppsala. The basis of the thesis is the study of a variety of source materials, such as artefact studies, runestones, topography and the prehistoric and early medieval hinterland. The thesis centers on archaeological excavation data and dating of settlement structures, particularly focusing on the settlements establishment. Through a critical review of primarily the written record and the archaeological data, the settlements characteristics and functions are discussed, emphasising when and if the settlement could be described as a town, central- or trading place..

Uppsats för avläggande av filosofie kandidatexamen iKulturvård, Bygghantverk, 27 hp, 2013. På omslaget felaktigt 2012..

Medieval glasses have for long been a neglected object group in archeological research in Sweden. With that in mind I choose to write about those in my essay. The aim of this paper is to bring the medieval glasses into the archaeological research. I intend to show where you can find medieval glass in Sweden and what kind of glasses have been made. I will also discuss why the archeological research is so limited when it comes to the medieval drinking glasses.

The purpose of this essay is to study the crimes and punishments in the Roman army, how ancient authors describe this phenomenon and the differences between the authors descriptions. The results of the essay are that the authors mostly describe crimes such as mutiny and desertion. Ruffus is the only one who mentions and describes other types of crimes than mutiny and desertion, such as theft, rape and disobedience. The reason why there is a difference between Ruffus and the other authors are that Ruffus wrote a collection of laws in the Roman army but the other authors wrote biographies and histories and therefore they only mentioned the most dramatic thing that happened, such as a mutiny in the army for example..

Glimmingehus is one of the most well preserved medieval castles in Sweden. This essay examines why it was built ? what were the intentions of the Lord, Jens Holgersen? Even though we?ll never be able to ask him, the answer to the question ?why?? can give us aninsight of how a man of his position thought in the Late Medieval time. To answer the question the castle are explored through three different angles ? the Lord of the castle and thesocial context the castle was built in, the landscape surrounding Glimmingehus ? has Jens Holgersen left any structural clues there, and finally the castle itself ? how has a potential visitor experienced Glimmingehus? The methods are greatly influenced by Gunhild Eriksdotter, who in her book Bakom fasaderna explores the possibilities of an analysis ofexperience together with an analysis of function in the archaeology of buildings.

AbstractThis thesis examines and discusses a sample of the medieval hypocausts (stone-heating ovens) in the Baltic area. The medieval construction is thoroughly explained as well as the antique hypocaust in order to establish a base for the following discussion. The medieval hypocaust has been almost forgotten for a long period of time. The last time someone dealt with this category of finds were in the 1960?s by Swedish archaeologist Iwar Andersson and in the 1970?s by Danish archaeologist Johannes Hertz.

The purpose of this essay was to try to understand the relationship between the horse and man during the last part of the Iron Age and trough out the Medieval Age. To be able to get a result I investigated the horse's tending, work within agriculture, riding, warfare, breeding, to stable horses, oxen, sports and hunting, eating of the horse and age at slaughter and more. The results showed that the horse's position changed from the later part of the Iron Age throughout the Medieval Ages and in different ways for, respectively, the elite as for the peasant culture..

The main purpose of this essay is to analyze the late medieval shirt found in the cathedral of Lund. It has been preserved in the church and later on exhibited in the museum of Lunds cathedral. The most interesting thing about this shirt is probably its close connection to the secular world, as well as to the church. At first sight it appears to be a liturgical garment, it seams to be far too big for a regular, profane smock or shirt, but in a letter received by the church of Lund from Christian I of Denmark this shirt is mentioned as a chemise, or smock. The questions I aim to answer on the following pages goes, what characterizes the chemise or smock? What characterizes the mass shirt or alba? How can you use this type of analyse to examine the shirt from the cathedral of Lund?.

This paper deals with the late Viking age/early medieval grave field in Björned, Torsåker parish, Ångermanland County in northern Sweden. The grave field in Björned is rare because it has all the signs of being Christianized before the surroundings. This awakes questions such as if the people of Björned came from another place and brought the religion with them or if someone else did that for them. To find these answers I have analysed the stable isotope ratios [delta]13C, [delta]15N and [delta]34S in human bone collagen. Through these stable isotopes we can not only see what the people consumed but also where their food had its origin.

In this study I compare the donor portraits on wallpaintings in Scanian churches from the 12th and the 15th century and relate them to medieval society.I find that women were equally capable of owning and donating land during the entire period. The image of the ideal woman changed during the 14th century from a married woman to the unreachable mistress of the chivalrous culture and the holy virgin. Women had a natural place beside their husbands in 12th century donor portraits, while single male donors are more frequent in the 15th century. While 12th century donors were supposed to show their position in society by offering plentiful donations directly to God, donors in the 14th century instead strived to present themselves as humble and pious. The individualisation of late medieval society meant that people had to depend on themselves to achieve salvation..

The aim of this essay is to investigate the murals in the church of Arbrå, what they portrait and how they can be linked to medieval typology as described in Biblia Pauperum (BP), the Poor Man?s Bible. The aim is also to find out what the purpose was to paint medieval churches and what the function of the paintings was. Arbrå Church was painted around 1520-1530, and almost all of the motifs from the Old Testament can be directly traced back to BP as can one motif from the New Testament. Together these paintings represent most of the important events which make out the foundation of the Christian Cult.

The intent with this paper is to investigate the medieval habitation in central Old Uppsala. This time-period has over the years been neglected. Therefore I wish to summarize and ana-lyze the medieval habitation to see what can be said about its continuity, and also to investi-gate why it is located in certain areas.Due to the amount of source material I have limited my investigation area to the central Old Uppsala. It is possible that this limitation will affect the result of the research but without the limitations the investigation area would have been too large to handle.The source material has been collected from excavation reports and the summarized. My theory is material culture and material agency.

The study focuses the evil within human beings and evil actions against other humans and the human kind. The evil is defined as evil actions such as murder and actions in war. The questions asked is whether the evil has a face and if it is possible in that case to paint that kind of face. The medieval mural paintings in old churches include Cain murdering his brother Abel based on the Bible. The study also includes reliefs, sculptures in stone describing Cains´s murder of Abel and sculptures with the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem according to the Bible.

The purpose of this work was to investigate the early medieval view of the Bilical king David through the analysis of ten illuminations found in early medieval manuscripts in which he is depicted playing string instruments. First, a description of medieval manuscripts and king David and string instruments was presented, second, an analysis and a discussion of images as source material and an interpretation of the mythic and symbolic significance that is based on ideas presented by Paul Ricoeurs and Roland Barthes of the ten illuminations followed. The results showed that king David often was portrayed as a musical king, a dancer and a prophet that incarnated wisdom and justice; that king David served as a role-model for the Western regents, and that he was portrayed in an idealised and estethically appealing manner..