Is there such a thing as unadulterated nature? All that surrounds us is culturally modified by man somewhere along our past. But culture is only a fictitious conception itself, created in an attempt to break the world into controllable objects. So in what do we find culture? In everything? In the objects or the stories they embrace? Who chooses what’s worth saving and how to save? Choosing what is culture is made from personal, ingrained dichotomies of what’s important and what is not. A selective eye creates a distorted truth, which could have unintentional long-term effects. This thesis will give a historical account of the archaeological discipline’s development in tending to our cultural heritage. By demonstrating its many complications, with examples of forest remains, I will argue for the need of innovation, communication and documentation. Only then can we get a broader, more varied and slightly less modified picture of the culture we choose to keep.

Abstract Erlandsson, K-O. 2007. Återanvända fornlämningar. En studie av Ölands rösen. Re-used ancient monuments. A study of the cairns on Öland. C-uppsats i arkeologi. Högskolan i Kalmar ht 2007. This is a study of the excavated cairns on Öland. The composition consists of three parts, the first part concentrates on what kind of re-uses there are of ancient monuments, the second part tries to tell why people did re-use burials and burial language, in the third part I have studied the excavated cairns on Öland and tried to see if the kinds of re-uses that were discussed in the first part can be seen on the ölandish cairns. Keywords: re-use, cairns, Öland, burials, burial language / Abstract Erlandsson, K-O. 2007. Återanvända fornlämningar. En studie av Ölands rösen. C-uppsats i arkeologi. Högskolan i Kalmar ht 2007. Detta är en studie av Ölands utgrävda rösen. Uppsatsen består av tre delar, den första delen tittar på vad det finns för slag av återbruk av fornlämningar, i den andra delen berättas det om varför människor återanvände gravar och gravspråk, i den tredje delen har jag tittat på de utgrävda öländska rösena och försökt se om de slag av återbruk som uppmärksammades i första delen går att se i de öländska rösena. Nyckelord: återbruk, rösen, Öland, begravningar, gravspråk

Disposal and deaccessioning are difficult subjects in the museum and archaeological field. Archaeological materialin museums grows only with time and increased number of excavations. Therefore problems are rising in themuseum field. In this thesis disposal and deaccessioning of archaeological material in the Nordic countries isstudied. The main question is: How is the disposal of archaeological material in the Nordic countries handled?Legislations of the countries and museum policies were studied with disposal or deaccessioning in mind. Questionswere sent to a museum in each country to get first hand information about the subject. Disposal of archaeologicalmaterial is not handled in the same way in the five countries. Two of them, Denmark and Norway havesimilar systems. But the other three have another process in these matters. The word disposal seems not to havethe exact same meaning in all of the countries. In this thesis it is argued that there is no theory that has a clearsolution about what disposal of archaeological material is. I have come to the conclusion that this is an issue thathas to be handled in the museums and the first step is to have a clear policy on disposal and deaccessioning inthe archeological field / Gallring är en svår fråga i museer och på det arkeologiska fältet. Det arkeologiska materialet i museer växer ioch med de arkeologiska utgrävningarna. Detta skapar ett stigande problem inom museum. Denna uppsats behandlargallring av arkeologiskt material i de nordiska länderna. Huvudfrågan är: Hur hanteras gallring av arkeologisktmaterial i de nordiska länderna? Ländernas lagstiftning och museer policy har studerats med gallring iåtanke. Frågor har skickats till ett museum i varje land för att få information om hur de hanterar gallring. De ärinte desamma i de fem länderna. Danmark och Norge använder liknande system medan de tre andra länderna haren annat system. Ordet gallring verkar inte ha exakt samma innebörd i alla länder. I uppsatsen diskuteras det attdet inte finns någon teori som har en klar lösning över gallring av arkeologiskt material. Jag har kommit till slutsatsenatt detta är en fråga som måste hanteras i museer och det första steget är att ha en tydlig policy om dessafrågor i museerna.

This thesis investigates the early field of library knowledge in Sweden between 1912 and 1939 (circa) through the lens ofFoucault’s archaelogy using a number of official documents (reports, bills, and statutes) as well as a number of articlesand speeches published in the journal Biblioteksbladet (founded 1916). It seeks to answer the question of how it becamepossible to form a field of knowledge, which external relations structured and enabled the field to exist, and which internalrelations of power and authority made it possible for librarians, state officials, ministers of education, and other experts toagree and disagree on the proper management of public libraries during the period.

This study deals with the contribution of the genetic variant lactase persistence among Neolithic people from the Baltic Island Öland. Skeletal remains from twelve individuals went through DNA sequencing in order to find the mutation that allows adult individuals to digest milk sugar. The twelve individuals were chosen from two different Neolithic sites, where the archaeological and isotopic data suggest that the individuals from Köpingsvik were hunters and gatherers and the individuals from Resmo were early farmers. The individuals with the genetic variant lactase persistence can be described with selection and genetic flow.  Only five individuals produced results and the mutation was found in two of the subjects. All the individuals who were successfully sequenced came from Resmo, whereasno individuals from Köpingsvik yielded any results.

Boplatsvallar, often translated as semi-subterranean settlements, is an ancient monument with a diffuse definition. Defined as –embankments that partially or completely surround a often lowered/dug down surface- this category of ancient monuments is also made up of a former category which traditionally was interpreted as winter settlements from the late Stone age in Sweden. This view of the ancient monuments carried over, to a certain extent, to this new definition. Should this be the case, that this category of ancient monuments are remains of winter settlements,  used recurringly over an extended period of time, then they should exhibit similar signals in regards to the distribution of the anthropogenically altered soil chemical and soil physical properties at the sites.The area around Lillsjön, Anundsjö parish in Ångermanland, have four boplatsvallar located separately in the regional area. This means that they can be considered single contexts suitable to test the aforementioned hypothesis.The result of the intra-site study indicates that the sites have been used differently. Two of the sites exhibit a more local distribution of the heightened values of phosphates and magnetic susceptibility, distributed close around the ancient monument itself. The other two sites have a distribution of heightened values spread over a larger area around the ancient monuments, where one of the ancient monuments shows no particular difference from the background values at the site.This results thus suggests that there is a difference in how these boplatsvallar have been used prehistorically.

The thesis sets out to discuss the Bronze Age cosmology in Scandinavia, based on the results from the investigations at Nibble outside Enköping in Uppland. The excavations were carried out in 2007 and revealed extensive remains of a ritual place with burials, cult houses and food preparation areas. In addition, hundreds of cupmarks and two ship rock carvings were found. The cult place was constructed by moving stones around, gathering them into stone settings, stone walls and heaps of fire-cracked stones. The importance of the stones as cosmological entities is established through this special and deliberate treatment. Nature is transformed into culture. The cult place was established in connection with the construction of a large stone setting at the top of a hillock. Cremated and crushed bones of a man had been placed centrally in the construction, and close by, several cult houses had been erected, complemented by a food preparation area, where sacrificial meals were prepared and eaten.   In many cases, stone settings and heaps of fire-cracked stones are used in similar manners. At a settlement site close to the cult place, there was a heap of fire-cracked stones that contained the cremated bones of a young woman. It had been specially constructed for her burial and contained layers of coal and fire-cracked stones from several cremation pyres. The border between what is a burial and what is not is hard to define. The burnt bones of the dead were handled in much the same way as the burnt stone. They were burnt and crushed, ground to a powder, and restored to the earth. The use of stones in connection with fire and water (and smoke) suggests the existence of a system built on the four elements: stone (earth), fire, water and air. In addition, the existence of a tripartite universe is suggested. Stone settings (and some of the heaps of fire-cracked stones) were constructed as portals to the underground, and the smoke from the funeral pyres was the means of transport to the heaven above.  During the Early Bronze Age, the functions of the warrior and the shaman were often carried out by the same individual. During the Late Bronze Age, however, the functions of the warrior and the shaman seem to have been separated.   The separation of the ritual functions show that a change in ritual practice and cosmology occurred some time in the middle of the Bronze Age. A complete cosmological change was probably not involved, and many older rituals were still carried out in the Late Bronze Age. The relationship between the four elements remained the same, and the treatment of stone in particular remained unchanged. The connection between stone and bone still prevailed, as did the crushing and grinding.

This study describes archaeological excavations carried out at Unguja Ukuu on the main island of Zanzibar, Tanzania. The site has long remained obscure, oral histories do not mention it and no particular group among the living community of the island describes its origin from the site. A stone well at Unguja Ukuu together with several other early monuments of the east African coast that survive on the site have been attributed to the Wadebuli, suspected by early scholars to be people of Arab descent from their colonies in India or elsewhere on the Islands of eastern Indian Ocean. Surface survey and the drilling of more than 200 cores have defined the lateral extent and the stratigraphy of the site. Unguja Ukuu is a large site (c.16–17 ha) and the study reveals that it is a major center of an African iron-using farming community who occupied it from c. 500 AD. Radiocarbon dating and pottery provide the basis for this chronology. The study addresses an old controversy whether some of the pre-stone built settlements that developed on the east African coast could be indications of urbanization. Knowledge of the functional specialization of the settlement prior to its abandonment c. 900 AD is based on the evidence on the density of craft activity, community engagement in the regional trade with the mainland African continent, as far away as Roman Egypt, and in the interregional trade connected to the Indian Ocean, as well as redistribution of foreign merchandise to other sites and areas in the region. These as well as the location of the site linking the external trade and the mainland resource base indicate that Unguja Ukuu was a key urban centre built of mud and timber structures. This challenges our previous understanding of 8–9th centuries AD as the onset of early urbanism on the east African coast. The study proposes cycles of urbanism and emphasizes the need to reassess the problem of early urban identity and the use of wide range of criteria to overcome limitations of previous early urban investigations south of the Sahara and beyond. The results of the investigation given in this study are relevant to the history and archaeology of Zanzibar and the rest of East Africa and make a contribution particularly to extending the known time depth of the early urban tradition often conceived to occur in the late first millennium ad.

Den här uppsatsen behandlar gammal DNA från 32 människor från den prehistoriska byn Ekwen belägen in nordöst Asien. Proverna har blivit masskopierade med hjälp av PCR och sekvenserad med FLX pyrosekvensering. Autentiska sekvenser har blivit bedömt genom användningen av PhyloNet och c-statistik och senare anpassad och jämförd med en referens sekvens (CRS). Tydliga C-T, T-C och A-G skador har upptäckts vid nukleotidpositioner vilket visar sig vara utmärkande för just den här populationen.

In the year 2007 the Swedish National Heritage Board released directions for how the contractarchaeology in Sweden should carry out their work. These directions stressed that a differentapproach to the archaeological finds should be used – that would lead to a higher degree ofselection than before. The purpose of this essay is to find the reason why this change indirections occurred, and this is done by a study of the history of the rescue archaeology inSweden. The other purpose of this essay is to examine if the excavation strategies inarchaeological excavation reports from different times, correlates with the general guidingprinciples for the contract archaeology in Sweden of that time.There are several reasons why the change in directions occurred, but it seems as the mainreasons are practical. The handling of archaeological finds is relatively expensive andarchaeological researches of today generally don’t need to take care of all the finds for theinterpretation. Consequently there is no reason to save everything. The study of theexcavation reports show that there is correlation between the excavation techniques used, andthe general guiding principles for the contract archaeology of that time.