This study was made with the express purpose to shine a light on how we use the present to understand the past. My focus was directed at how the view on gender during the last couple of hundred years has influenced how we construct arbitrary gender norms for a Scandinavian bronze age society. To complete this study, I looked at the Swedish gravemound “Hågahögen”, on the outskirts of Uppsala, and compared it to three Danish mounds with similar properties. Hågahögen consists of the cremated remains of one, or possibly two, individuals who have been interpreted as male due to the presence of a sword in the grave. The Danish graves are all located on the Danish mainland, known as Jutland, and are called Egtved, Borum Eshøj and Trindhøj. Due to the extraordinarily well-preserved remains in these graves they proved to be an excellent counter to Hågahögen. Because of this the biological sex of these individuals are not in question, therefore I could use them to compare various arguments and how their sex was being portrayed. My sources consisted of various articles, archaeological textbooks, reports and popular science books. My results show that graves that contain males are generally valued higher than those that contain females. Power is more often attributed to the male remains while the females are often seen as objects to empower males. The women I studied were either seen as mothers, wives or sexual objects. The men were seen as chieftains, kings, ritual masters or they weren’t described in enough detail to conclude a role for them. The individual in Hågahögen was given masculinity because of the sword in the grave, but also due to the implied sway and power over those who built the grave after their death. That sort of power is rarely seen as a feminine trait, therefor it was impossible for the archaeologists of old to see the occupant of the grave as anything other than male.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-294911 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Rössle, Anna |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Arkeologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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