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Finding the Lady of the Lake : A Geospatial Analysis of Bronze Age Lake Deposition Sites / Sökandet efter damen i sjön : En geospatial studie av bronsåldersdepåer vid sjöar

During the Bronze Age, bronze items were sacrificed to the gods by leaving them in the landscape. When making these sacrifices, known as deposits, the Bronze Age people followed certain landscape rules. These rules, and other similarities between the sites, can be rediscovered by analyzing the attributes of the sites. By understanding which attributes are relevant for the deposition sites, we can find more sites and contribute to the understanding of how Bronze Age depositions took place. This study aims to identify relevant attributes for the siting of Bronze Age Lake deposition sites near the lakes Mälaren and Hjälmaren in Sweden. 13 lake deposition sites were examined in ArcMap with respect to 6 attributes: Elevation, Soil Wetness, Aspect, Soil Type, Shore Distance, and Shore Direction. The attributes were studied independently of one another. The results revealed that a majority of deposits were the closest to a southern shore, there were no deposits in northern slopes, and no deposits were made between certain distances from the Bronze Age shoreline. Therefore, the attributes Shore Direction, Shore Distance, and Aspect appear to be relevant to lake deposition sites. The study briefly discusses how these results are related to archeological theories. As this study had a small sample size, the results cannot be assumed to apply to all lake deposit sites. Future studies should study more attributes, how attributes relate to one another, and examine the relevant attributes in other landscape features.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-315775
Date January 2022
CreatorsSchulte Koskinen, julia
PublisherKTH, Geoinformatik
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
RelationTRITA-ABE-MBT ; 22568

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