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. As long as an archaeological investigation is not a part of a large project, where the purpose is to show the width of the desertion, one cannot expect that one single investigation will give much information or knowledge about the width. However, if the ambition is to obtain a complete picture of a medieval deserted farm or village, this essay confirms that an archaeological investigation is necessary, willingly in an interdisciplinary cooperation.

The late medieval agrarian crisis is characterized by a sharp decline in population which caused farm abandonment and mass death. The crisis arose due to a lack of access to arable land and insufficient food production in relation to the growing population. However, there is evidence of villages and farms surviving the crisis by adapting to new conditions through the development of sustainable structures. Studying the literature from a resilience theoretical perspective, this paper discusses existing opportunities to study the agrarian crisis, opening avenues for future research. More specifically, this study contributes to the literature by examining studies on abandoned and surviving farms from Jämtland, Östergötland, Småland, Värmland and Skåne, concerning the interpretive possibilities of the farm's survival. The results suggest that Medieval archaeology excels in increasing knowledge about human behaviour and the relationship to the environment from a long-term perspective. Resilience theory can provide an interdisciplinary framework, increasing the understanding of social-ecological systems, therefore ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem services. Moreover, the findings of this thesis suggest that pollen analysis and dendrochronology are commonly used in research on the agrarian crisis. The methods reveal that common survival strategies consisted of introducing less labour-intensive farming methods or taking over the lands of desolate farms. Additionally, farms that had access to natural resources, cooperated with other farms on open land and had larger households most often survived the crisis.