Sweden has proven to be a fruitful country when it comes to history and ancient archeological monuments. However one specific type of ancient monument stands out in both quantity and in their distribution, trappings pits. Sweden has about 30 000 documented trapping pits spread throughout northern Sweden. However, even though there is a large quantity of trapping pits that have been documented, determining the age of a trapping pit is a difficult task. This practice has been largely debated by Swedish archaeologists and is to this day seen as problematic when it comes to the radiocarbon dating of trapping pits. This thesis will discuss these topics. What exactly does the date show? Will it show the time of its construction? Perhaps the time of its use? Or it could be completely erroneous? Receiving a false radiocarbon dating of an ancient monument could prove very controversial and adverse, because reliable dates are the very foundation needed in order to place an ancient monument in a context. Without being able to date an ancient monument, interpretations of societal origin and function will be harder to determine and largely up for debate. Chronologies only reflect and represent the data and information that has been fed into it. This often leaves an uncertainty concerning which data that actually shows an open and honest representation of trapping pits, and which data shows a false or misleading representation. This thesis will therefore analyze previous chronologies that have been used to represent trapping pits and show exactly how the data was gathered, used and represented. Three primary archaeological studies will therefore be showcased and analyzed to determine if the result can actually represent an honest timeframe of when the pits were constructed.

Outlying forest and mountain areas in the inland of middle and north Scandinavia have for a long time been seen as marginal areas of little importance to the main Scandinavian historical narrative. However, in recent time, the importance of the outland has increasingly been in the focus of archaeological research. It has been suggested by several scholars that the emergence of centralized power structures in various parts of Scandinavia during the mid Iron Age can be explained by an extensive trade of resources like antler, bone, and iron. However, much is still unknown about the broader context of these activities and the people that performed them. The aim of this study is to analyse the character of these activities and exchange networks in a study area consisting of areas on both sides of the present Swedish-Norwegian border. This is done by analysing the pattern of archaeological remains in the outland and how they relate to landscape characteristics like topography, water courses and sediment types. The main archaeological remains studied are graves, pitfalls for moose and reindeer hunting and iron working sites. The results show the use of graves as territorial markers in the landscape and the existence of central places in the outland, possibly used for trade and social activities. The study also suggests that the relations between people from the hunter-gatherer and the agrarian communities changed during the late Iron Age, which is indicated by a dislocation of graves further up in the valleys to the north.

Syftet med denna uppsats var att undersöka om det är möjligt att förutse var de okända fångstgropar befinner sig i landskapet med hjälp av karaktärsdragen från de kända lämningarna. Målet med detta arbete är att identifiera och registrera okända fångstgropar för att skydda dem från att skadas av skogsbruket. Denna studie förhåller sig till ett undersökningsområde (kommunerna Karlskoga och Degerfors) men diskuterar även andra fångstgropar i Sverige. Under detta arbete har de kända fångstgroparna nyttjats på flera olika sätt; med hjälp av terrängskuggning granskades området vid fångstgroparna i syfte att se om det fanns ytterligare gropar i närheten samt att studera hur en grop kunde synas i terrängskuggningen. Sedan fältbesöktes de kända fångstgroparna för att kunna sammanställa deras karaktärsdrag och med hjälp av detta, samt tidigare forskning och kartanalyser kunde fem karaktärsdrag uppmärksammas. I slutändan upptäcktes åtta okända fångstgropar, varav tre är kvalitetssäkrade av Ulf Eriksson, arkeolog på Skogsstyrelsen och är/kommer bli registrerade i Kulturmiljöregistret. Uppsatsen diskuterar också det nuvarande kunskapsläget om fångstgropar till olika bytesdjur, samt jakt- och fångstmetoderna vargskall och varggård. Detta har dessvärre inte kunnat nå en slutsats då det fanns alldeles för många osäkra faktorer i tidigare forskning som påverkade uppsatsen negativt. / This paper aims to investigate whether it is possible to predict the location of the unknown pits in the landscape using the characteristics of the known remains. The goal of this work is to identify and register unknown pitfalls to protect them from being damaged by forestry. This study relates to an investigation area (the municipalities of Karlskoga and Degerfors) but also discusses other catch pits in Sweden. During this work, the known catch pits have been used in several different ways; with the help of terrain shading, the area at the trapping pits was examined to see if there were additional pits nearby and to study how a pit could be seen in the terrain shading. The known trapping pits were then visited in the field to be able to compile their characteristics. With the help of previous research and map analyses, five characteristics could be noticed. In the end, seven unknown trap pits were discovered, three of which are quality assured by Ulf Eriksson, archaeologist at the Swedish Forest Agency. The thesis also discusses the current state of knowledge about trapping pits for various prey animals, as well as the hunting and trapping methods wolf hunting and wolf enclosure. Unfortunately, this has not been able to reach a conclusion as too many uncertain factors in previous research affected the essay negatively.