Bronze Age cairns have been interpreted as everything from navigation marks to marking liminal places in the landscape. It has also been stated that the main purpose of their location is to be visible. This is something that has been taken for granted. The main problem is the cairns have been considered as a homogenous monument. With the help of digital methods like GIS it is possible to test this kind of questions in quantitative way. The viewshed analysis is a good way to do this. The main focus of this thesis is the question whether the Bronze Age cairns in Tjustbygden, north-east in the county of Småland, are located to be visible in the landscape. Further, the question of whether the size of the monument has something to do with good visibility is dealt with. The result of the analysis is then discussed in relation to phenomenology and ritual phenomena, such as rock art sites.

La présente recherche vise à évaluer l'efficacité de la méthode proposée par Caims, Perrin, & Caims (1985) auprès de classes d'enfants du début du primaire. Cette méthode permet d'identifier la structure de l'organisation sociale de la classe en faisant appel au rapport verbal de ses membres. En conséquence, la méthode est évaluée au niveau de sa fiabilité, de sa stabilité et de sa validité par la mise en relation avec l'observation de l'enseignant et l'évaluation du statut auprès des pairs. L'échantillon comprend 6 classes du début du primaire provenant de 4 écoles de la région de Québec, soient 2 classes de maternelle, 2 de 2e année et 2 de 4e année. Les données sont recueillies à deux reprises avec un intervalle d'approximativement 2 mois, sauf pour l'observation de l'enseignant qui se déroule de façon continue au cours de cette période. Les résultats indiquent que la méthode est relativement fiable, stable et valide lorsqu'employée auprès de classes d'enfants du début du primaire. Par contre, plusieurs enfants ne sont pas identifiés comme étant inclus dans un réseau ou isolés. La méthode en question constitue toutefois un outil précieux d'investigation des relations sociales des enfants du primaire et présente l'avantage d'être simple, rapide et économique

<p>From the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age, a number of different fossil agrarian landscapes can be found in southern Sweden - clearance cairn areas, celtic fields, stone-wall complexes and geometrically laid-out strip fields. With two different comparative analyses, this paper tries to explain some of the differences between clearance cairn systems and the other fossil field systems</p><p>The shape of the early Iron Age agrarian landscape varies between different provinces of southern Sweden. At Gotland, celtic field systems were laid-out before 500 BC. In Småland at the same time, areas with clearance cairns were created. How can the difference be explained? The different physical appearance of clearance cairn areas and celtic fields can be explained by the different ways to handle the ard in till and in sandy soil. In sandy soils, and other fine soils, the ard will at each turn deposit small amounts of roots, soil and debris at the edge of the field, which over the years will build up the walls of the celtic fields. But in boulder-rich soil the ard will constantly have to be lifted and tilted, which means that the material will be released before the ard reaches the edge of the field. Since crops, vegetation, houses, field system areas, etc. are identical or at least similar in both landscape types, they most likely represent the same farming system with hay-meadow – stabling – manure – intensely cultivated fields</p><p>In most provinces in southern Sweden, the pre-roman celtic fields and clearance cairn areas were replaced by geometrically laid-out strip fields or different kinds of stone-wall complexes enclosing the fields and farms, around AD 200, but not in Småland. There, the clearance cairn areas were used and extended throughout the Iron Age. How can this regional variation be explained? A comparison between the different landscape types reveals no significant differences in tools, crops, houses, etc. that would support that the difference is explained by a shift in farming systems. A more likely hypothesis is that the difference is due to regional pre-state or early-state political structures with an ambition to control land-use. This is based on the observations that 1) within each region the physical appearance of the fossil landscape is very coherent; 2) between the different regions there are significant differences, and; 3) the different systems were introduced approximately simultaneously in the regions Gotland, Öland, Östergötland, Uppland and Västergötland. This hypothesis implies that Småland either had a separate political structure which chose to keep the old clearance cairn land-use system, or lacked a corresponding regional structure.</p>

From the pre-Roman and Roman Iron Age, a number of different fossil agrarian landscapes can be found in southern Sweden - clearance cairn areas, celtic fields, stone-wall complexes and geometrically laid-out strip fields. With two different comparative analyses, this paper tries to explain some of the differences between clearance cairn systems and the other fossil field systems The shape of the early Iron Age agrarian landscape varies between different provinces of southern Sweden. At Gotland, celtic field systems were laid-out before 500 BC. In Småland at the same time, areas with clearance cairns were created. How can the difference be explained? The different physical appearance of clearance cairn areas and celtic fields can be explained by the different ways to handle the ard in till and in sandy soil. In sandy soils, and other fine soils, the ard will at each turn deposit small amounts of roots, soil and debris at the edge of the field, which over the years will build up the walls of the celtic fields. But in boulder-rich soil the ard will constantly have to be lifted and tilted, which means that the material will be released before the ard reaches the edge of the field. Since crops, vegetation, houses, field system areas, etc. are identical or at least similar in both landscape types, they most likely represent the same farming system with hay-meadow – stabling – manure – intensely cultivated fields In most provinces in southern Sweden, the pre-roman celtic fields and clearance cairn areas were replaced by geometrically laid-out strip fields or different kinds of stone-wall complexes enclosing the fields and farms, around AD 200, but not in Småland. There, the clearance cairn areas were used and extended throughout the Iron Age. How can this regional variation be explained? A comparison between the different landscape types reveals no significant differences in tools, crops, houses, etc. that would support that the difference is explained by a shift in farming systems. A more likely hypothesis is that the difference is due to regional pre-state or early-state political structures with an ambition to control land-use. This is based on the observations that 1) within each region the physical appearance of the fossil landscape is very coherent; 2) between the different regions there are significant differences, and; 3) the different systems were introduced approximately simultaneously in the regions Gotland, Öland, Östergötland, Uppland and Västergötland. This hypothesis implies that Småland either had a separate political structure which chose to keep the old clearance cairn land-use system, or lacked a corresponding regional structure.

Insurance contracts will be reported at fair values on insurers’ balance sheets from 2010. In this thesis, we will review the conceptual and theoretical backbone of the insurance fair valuation project while providing a summary of the key features of the fair valuation project. Then, we will conduct a case study aimed at finding, under the fair valuation regime, the best asset allocation strategy for a particular business unit that carries a hypothetical annuity portfolio using a single modelling framework for valuation, risk calculation and business appraisal.

This thesis addresses critical conceptions of Scottish literary development in the twentieth-century which inscribe realism as both the authenticating tradition and necessary telos of modern Scottish writing. To this end I identify and explore a Scottish ‘counter-tradition’ of modern uncanny fiction. Drawing critical attention to techniques of modal disruption in the works of a number of post-1970s Scottish writers gives cause to reconsider that realist teleology while positing a range of other continuities and tensions across modern Scottish literary history. The thesis initially defines the critical context for the project, considering how realism has come to be regarded as a medium of national literary representation. I go on to explore techniques of modal disruption and uncanny in texts by five Scottish writers, contesting ways in which habitual recourse to the realist tradition has obscured important aspects of their work. Chapter One investigates Ali Smith’s reimagining of ‘the uncanny guest’. While this trope has been employed by earlier Scottish writers, Smith redesigns it as part of a wider interrogation of the hyperreal twenty-first-century. Chapter Two considers two texts by James Robertson, each of which, I argue, invokes uncanny techniques familiar to readers of James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson in a way intended specifically to suggest concepts of national continuity and literary inheritance. Chapter Three argues that James Kelman’s political stance necessitates modal disruption as a means of relating intimate individual experience. Re-envisaging Kelman as a writer of the uncanny makes his central assimilation into the teleology of Scottish realism untenable, complicating the way his work has been positioned in the Scottish canon. Chapter Four analyses A.L. Kennedy’s So I Am Glad, delineating a similarity in the processes of repetition which result in both uncanny effects and the phenomenon of tradition, leading to Kennedy’s identification of an uncanny dimension in the concept of national tradition itself. Chapter Five considers the work of Alan Warner, in which the uncanny appears as an unsettling sense of significance embedded within the banal everyday, reflecting an existentialism which reaches beyond the national. In this way, I argue that habitual recourse to an inscribed realist tradition tends to obscure the range, complexity and instability of the realist techniques employed by the writers at issue, demonstrating how national continuities can be productively accommodated within wider, pluralistic analytical approaches.