This essay is about the Mesolithic of Motala Canal and the depositions that have been found there, including a large number of animal bones. I would argue the most important discovery at this site was the human skulls, which will be the main topic of this essay. I will be working with ritual theory, and I will be working with past research on the Mesolithic, graves, and rituals. In this essay, I discuss whether this site has anything to do with rituals, and if so, are these mortuary rituals? The conclusion is that the site I have analysed was a ritualistic space. Some form of rituals that involved the craniums happened here for around 150 years during the late Mesolithic. What is not clear is if this was for mortuary purposes or other kind of purposes.

The roman coins on the islands of Bornholm, Öland and Gotland have shownarchaeologist and historians that a connection between Scandinavia and the RomanEmpire existed. But what did the roman coins mean to the inhabitants of these islands?This essay will study the coins found on the islands and the context in which they havebeen found. The aim for this essay is to understand in what context the coins werefound and what they meant for the inhabitants. The essay also strive towardsconducting a discussion around theories, speculations and facts to form an idea of whatthe coins may have meant to the inhabitants.

Examination concerning the possibility of finding prehistoric children as considerable actors through the medium of neolithic clay figurines which were discovered in the archaeological remains regarding a pitted-ware settlement excavated in Tråsättra, Stockholm parish in the year 2016. The main aim for this study is to pay attention to a group of individuals most often overlooked in archaeological research as a whole, by searching to find new angles of incidence in a material previously interpreted from a ritual perspective.

During late Nordic iron age there were two main cultures in Scandinavia; the Norse and the Sami.  This essay seeks to do two things. Firstly, to determine differences and similarities in how said cultures viewed liminality, that is the border line, or threshold, between two 'areas'. Secondly, to in one text gather and discuss all these areas where liminality played an important role. If not exactly the same a clear similarity is found in how liminality in the landscape was viewed, but the Norse seems to have found more meaning in the liminality of architecture. Both cultures also found one sex preferable before the other concerning magic, but while the Sami favored men, the Norse thought it women's work. Men taking on a woman's role was, among the Norse, found to be both shameful and dangerous, while the Sami of the age seems to have had no such view.  The Norse and Sami saw power in liminality, in various ways, making use of it in burial, religious ritual and magic.

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.

The mirror appears frequently in funerary contexts in the Greek colonies Locri Epizefiri and Metaponto and this thesis endeavours to rebuild the contexts of these mirrors using the approach of contextual archaeology. To explore the mirror’s contemporary function and meaning within the burial record and to discern why mirrors appear within a funerary setting, a chain of contexts is followed from the archaeological material to iconographical analysis, to comparative archaeological data, widening the contextual circles step by step. In the first part, the appearance of the graves with mirrors in Locri Epiezefiri and Metaponto is examined. The result is then compared with the iconographical evidence and the comparative archaeological data. The thesis further examines the mirror’s female association and discusses how the colonies of Magna Graecia should be studied as a third culture in accordance with the middle ground. Based on the results from the analysis, the discussion argues for a connection between mirrors and the Orphic-Dionysiac-Pythagorean cult, especially pronounced in Magna Graecia during this period, but also possible ritualistic functions such as divination and the notion of “female knowledge”.

Through the examination of four different burial sites located on the island of Öland this essay identifies and interprets different socially constructed age groups present in iron age communities based on the graves of children from the period. This is done mainly by studying the placements, constructions and contents of the graves, as well as the relationships between the graves on the burial sites.

The Mesolithic period in Sweden lasted generally between 9500-4000 BC and is characterised by the dynamic landscape. People usually lived in smaller groups by the coast, sustained by the forests and the sea’s resources. The study is limited to central Sweden, specifically the province of Västmanland. Fourteen settlements are analysed through an archaeological analysis with an ecological perspective in order to answer how the Mesolithic people utilised the landscape resources and how this is reflected in said landscape. In conclusion, people used the landscape in order to accommodate their current needs long term or short term.

The scabbards from the Valsgärde boat-graves are fine works of artisanship, the person who made them put many hours of work into them. It is easy to get lost in typologies and books,but one must not forget that some crafts are still being practiced to this day. Some of this knowledge is not taught in any formal school setting but is still valuable to academics seeking to deeper their understanding of history. That is why it is important to operationalize this practical and traditional knowledge when interpreting archaeological materials. In this thesis I seek to gain further knowledge by consulting an artisan when interpreting two seax scabbards and three sword scabbards from Valsgärde 7 & 8.

The size of the gold foil figures is about the size of half a postal stamp and consists of millimeter-thin gold plates with depicted motifs. They may be the smallest artefact that we have left from the Late Iron Age, more specifically 6th and 7th Century CE. Despite this, it has not stopped the craftsman from creating such detailed motifs that are almost impossible to see to the naked eye. In previous research, the gold foil figures have been treated as representative images, however, this present work shows that these small gold plates have been considered as more than just images. An investigation is conducted of phenomenological aspects that can be observed in the picture, and of different conditions in which the find arises. By studying and discussing the collection of gold foil figures from four locations in southern Sweden and comparing various aspects that arise in the material, interesting patterns and details are noted which did not receive much attention previously.