This study turns to what is for many an everyday item – yogurt – as a critical zone observatory, a synergistic, place-based laboratory which aims to integrate heterogenous representations of planetary phenomena as they are registered at a common surface. Yogurt has an impressive cultural endurance largely derived from its prominence in various paradigms of health. The product has culturally endured in another sense: as a common cultural medium where humans and microbes have met for generations. This study begins with a profile of yogurt as most encounter it today to consider how normative notions of health interface with the temporal and spatial imaginaries entailed in commodity geographies. Commoditized yogurt is characterized by a low and limited microbial biodiversity compared to yogurts produced outside of the commodity context. Yogurt is therefore presented as a micro case study to consider modes by which we sense and valuate ecological phenomena beyond the perceptible surface, how such sens-abilities intersect models of health, and to what effect. To trace a history of yogurt along these contours, I introduce it as a particular kind of artefact: a global object. As an object of environmental history, I define a global object as a global commodity with a high potential to be re-localized, and therefore with a high potential to re-shape commodity geographies. However, this trajectory is contingent upon framing yogurt as a critical zone observatory – a site where global phenomena like human-microbial interaction may become familiar and intimate. Guided by new materialist theory, I weave together historical and ethnographic case studies from the following consortium: resident yogurt bacteria, artisanal yogurt producers and home fermenters, a mystical immunologist, and an 11th century linguistic scholar. Through these perspectives, I both sketch and apply a framework for de-centered, interspecies histories of cultural (re)production through an extended metaphor of biofilm: the coagulative bacterial structure giving yogurt its characteristic texture. In so doing I provide a re-articulation of “the probiotic” as an integrative case of human and more-than-human health. The study concludes by directing these implications towards a consideration of aesthetic engagement by displaying how fermentation practice may enliven matters of re-diversification and re-localization.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the narration between Swedish and British textbooks in history differs, with focus on the era of the Cold War. This study will also examine how the narration between countries has developed in history textbooks between 1959 and 2020, with three textbooks from each country. One textbook from Sweden and Britain written at the beginning of the Cold War, one from each country at the end of the Cold War and finally one from each country written in modern time for a retrospective view on the era. From what this study has concluded is that Swedish and British textbooks in history does differ in the earlier history textbooks with Sweden having a focus on a democracy narration during 1959 and 1996, but changes it's pragmatic neutrality story to a story of equality between the decades. The British history textbooks from 1963 and 1989 have in contrast a different focus, it's narration. During 1963 Britain has a variability story which develops into a prosperity story during the 1990’s. In the modern era of the 21-centuary, the textbooks from both Sweden and Great Britain share a similar form of narration, as both tell a history with focus on democracy and a latter form of the equality story.

The purpose of the study has been to investigate women's theft crime in northern Gotland during the 1840s, and whether the women have committed co-offending together with other perpetrators. The study uses the method of hermeneutic text analysis. The study used court books from Gotland's northern district court from the years 1845 to 1847. The study uses gender theory, which is used to analyze and emphasize power relations between women and other perpetrators. The results of the study show that most women have stolen because of poverty. Clothes and food were the most common items stolen. In the court records, it appears that women are described differently than men. Several women had poor knowledge of Christianity and had given birth to children out of wedlock and were therefore more vulnerable. When co- offending was studied, conclusions could be drawn that women often co-offended with men, and in court, several women declared that they had been forced or threatened to steal. Through the gender theory, it is possible to see tendencies towards unequal power relations within marriage, where women have a lower status than men. Women who co- offended with other women are more likely to have done so consensually. The didactic question of the study dealt with the subject of historical awareness, where the topic of the essay can be linked to discussions about women and crime and what change may be seen over time. The discussions are expressed in terms of gender and how gender patterns can change over time.

In this study the aim is to analyse lived religion in the miracle stories relating to the twoSwedish saints Brynolf of Skara and Nikolaus of Linköping. The purpose of the study isto contribute to the knowledge about the religion of individuals in the Middle Ages inSweden to give a broader view on religion. Along with analysing individual religiosityan analysis of the didactical possibilities of miracle stories has also been made. Ahermeneutical method has been used to analyse the material. The analysis of the miraclestories mostly aligned with earlier research. The study found among other things that ifan illness healed after a saint was called for help, then it did not need to be an instantrecovery. If the illness was concluded not to be able to heal on its own or with humanassistance, then recovery was regarded as a miracle.

This study examines how historiography has portraited the planning of the Holocaust. This has benn carried out with the support of a qualitative text alalysis as a method. The study has its starting point in how different historians have attributed the role of the Wannsee Conference. The reasearch's theoretical approach is based on concepts about modernity and conceptual analyzers about rationality, bureaucracy and industrialization. These concepts have been used as analysis tools in order to contrast historians' conlusions.  The result shows that there are several intrepretations about the significance of the Wannsee Conference. Several histrians agree that the Wannsee Conference can be considered a clear turning point. This is because the violent persecution of the legal population will increase after the conference takes place. However, other historians belive that there were several decisive fators in the war that led to what became the Holocaust. Much indicates that it was a bureaucratic mess within the Nazi elite, while several historians point out that the Holocaust will grow out of the war. The reulst clearly has shown how historians have problematized structures as casual axplanations, rather than discussing the role of Adolf Hitler, as previous reasearch has stated was one of the main areas in early historiography. The Holocaust became a means of how the Nazis feared to be defeated in the war, Finally, a discussion regarding didactics has also been held about how this subject ahould be utilized in a teaching context.

Under vikingatiden och medeltiden hade Gotland förmodligen en omfattande tingsorganisation. För Banda ting har Suderting förmodats vara en tingsplats utmed Idån och Fjäle Myr som syntes vara betydelsefulla på Mejer’s 1600-tals karta. Vilken betydelse har våtmarker som Fjäle Myr och vattendrag som Idån haft för tingsorganisationen och kommunikationer i Banda ting under järnålder? Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka vattendrag och tingsgränser i Banda ting under järnålder, samt identifiera nätverk och kommunikationsleder. Uppsatsen har utifrån historiskt kartmaterial återskapat vattendrag, våtmarker och gränser. Samt använt rumsliga metodanalyser i GIS av fornlämningar i landskapet. Kommunikationsleder och gränser har studerats med ett teoretiskt ramverk att landskapet, i form av topografi, vattendrag och våtmarker, formar dessa. Resultatet av analysen visar att fornborgar har haft en viktig funktion i att försvara kommunikationsleder, även att nätverk och makt hänger ihop i en bredare tingsorganisation. Vattendrag och våtmarker som Fjäle Myr och Stormyr var farbara och utgjorde ett större kommunikationsnätverk. Samt att tingsgränser har en korrelation till vatten och är möjliga att återskapa med rumsliga analyser. / During the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, Gotland likely had an extensive thing organization. Suderting is assumed to be the thing place for Banda, located along Idån and Fjäle Myr which appeared to be significant on Mejer's 17th century map. What significance did wetlands such as Fjäle Myr and waterways such as Idån have for the thing organization and communication during the Iron age in Banda ting? The purpose of this essay was to investigate waterways and boundaries in Banda ting during the Iron Age, also to identify network and communication routes. Based on historical map material, the essay has recreated watercourses, wetlands and borders. As well as used spatial method analyzes in GIS of ancient remains in the landscape. Communication routes and borders have been studied with a theoretical framework that the landscape shapes these in the form of topography, waterways and wetlands. The result of the analysis shows that hill forts have had an important function in defending communication routes, that network and power connect in a wider organization of things. Waterways and wetlands such as Fjäle Myr and Stormyr were navigable and formed a larger communication network. And that thing boundaries have a correlation to water and can be recreated with spatial analyses.

This thesis explores the experiences of rural communities who lived between the seventh and ninth centuries in central and eastern England. Utilising archaeological evidence as the primary source for study, the central aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the ways in which settlement remains can provide a picture of contemporary social, economic and political conditions in ‘Middle Saxon’ England. Analysis of archaeological evidence from currently-occupied rural settlements represents a particularly unique and informative dataset to accomplish this central aim, and when combined with other forms of evidence illustrates that the seventh to ninth centuries was a period of fundamental social change, that impacted rural communities in significant and lasting ways. The transformation of settlement character was part of a more widespread process of landscape investment during the ‘Middle Saxon’ period, as rapidly stratifying social institutions began to manifest power and influence through new means. Such an analysis represents a significant departure from the prevailing scholarly outlook of the early medieval landscape, which continues to posit that the countryside of England remained largely unchanged until the development of historic villages from the ninth century onward. In this regard, the evidence presented by this thesis from currently-occupied rural settlements provides substantial backing to the idea that many historic villages emerged as part of a two-stage process which began during the ‘Middle Saxon’ period. Whilst it was only following subsequent change that recognisable later village plans began to take shape, key developments between the seventh and ninth centuries helped articulate the form and identity of rural centres, features that in many instances persisted throughout the medieval period and into the present day.

This thesis examines the history of the cultural heritage site of Eketorp, a prehistoric ring-fort, on the island of Öland, Sweden. The archaeological excavations at Eketorp, which began in 1964, lasted for a decade and soon turned into one of the largest archaeological research projects in Sweden. The scale and the implementation of the excavations, as an interdisciplinary and international research project, fostered a whole generation of archaeologists and resulted in numerous research publications. After the excavations the archaeological site was transformed into a full-scale archaeological reconstruction by the Swedish National Heritage Board. Since the mid-1980s the site has been a popular tourist attraction and open-air museum. The history of the site itself connects to several academic fields, including archaeology, history of archaeology, cultural heritage and museum studies. Through Ludwig Fleck’s concept thought collective and Donna Haraway’s situated knowledge, which are used as analytical tools, the aim of this thesis is to explore how these different fields interacted throughout the history of Eketorp. Further, the analytical tools are used to highlight how these interactions have generated notions of time, space, and gender. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach with the history of Eketorp analysed in three analytical chapters, each of them with different chronological and empirical focus. First, Eketorp is explored as a contemporary museum space through ethnographic fieldwork. Second, archive material is used to analyse how the archaeological excavation and the following archaeological reconstruction were conducted during the 1960s and onwards. Third, scientific texts are used to analyse how interpretations of Eketorp as a prehistoric site has changed. The concluding chapter integrates the results of the three chapters in order to critically examine how notions of time, space and gender interconnect between these fields. Illustrated by a wide chronological and interdisciplinary approach, the central argument of the thesis is thus that the Eketorp thought collective and thought style, intimately connected to hierarchies in academic practice, were created, performed, and maintained through several scientific and heritage institutions.

This thesis examines the evidence for the buildings and precincts of the five friaries of late medieval London: Black Friars, Grey Friars, White Friars, Austin Friars and Crossed (or Crutched) Friars. Virtually nothing survives, at least above ground, of these once-famous institutions and so documentary and archaeological evidence form the core of the research. Using a technique of historic map regression – working backwards from the modern Ordnance Survey map and carrying out a succession of ‘digital tracings' of historic maps – the early modern street plan of each friary was drawn. Then, evidence from dozens of archaeological excavations (small and large, antiquarian and modern) could be pasted onto the base map of each friary. Finally, documentary evidence was brought in, primarily a series of surveys (‘particulars for grant') by the Court of Augmentations, the Crown body supervising the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and ‘40s. After setting out the historiography of research into monastic London, five chapters examine the five friaries in turn, discussing the church, cloister, precinct walls and gardens, and illustrating the evidence with a series of reconstructed plans. The chapters also examine the fate of the friary buildings in the mid-sixteenth century, after the Dissolution. In a concluding chapter, the churches and precincts are compared, looking at size, status and the use of space. The limited evidence for the economy of the friaries – both income and expenditure – is also examined. The gradual ‘secularisation' of the friaries in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries is also considered, before studying the purchasers of the old friary buildings in the 1540s and the uses they made of their new properties.

This essay takes a look at which gender norms and stereotypes can be found in high-school history textbooks, and the values that they pass on to the students who read them. By analysing the textbooks from both a text and image perspective, a rounded view of the values and ideals concerning power and gender that the books contain can be seen. The use of gender theory gives the essay a clear theoretical framework through which the material is analysed. The result showed that the history textbooks over all contained an outdated view of gender roles and gender dynamics. There was a clear overrepresentation of men in both the text and the pictures throughout the books, and the language used created a hierarchy between men and women.  This in turn sends outdated messages to students, messages which may not fit the current ideal of gender equality.