Diffracting Digital Images in the Making

This paper presents a diffractive dialogue between prehistoric imagery, digital or computational imaging, and art practices. Our dialogue begins by responding to Thomas Nail’s recent argument that digital images force us to recognize the ontological mobility and instability of all images, whether contemporary or ancient (Nail 2019). In tandem with this, Back Danielsson and Jones (2020, 4) develop the notion of ‘Images in the making’. By discussing images as being ‘in-the-making’ they underline an understanding of images as conditions of possibility, and as processes of assembly, outlining the way in which images draw together and bringing into relation the cognitive and material components of the world. Although, the original notion of ‘images in the making’ drew on digital images to make its argument, it did not explore the special character of digital images in any detail. This paper develops the notion of images in the making in the context of the digital domain. It will focus on two digital imaging techniques developed within archaeology and cultural heritage– Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) and Structure from Motion photogrammetry (SfM)- exploring how these techniques play out in heritage and art world contexts and practices. The paper will highlight digital images as unstable compositions, explore how digital images in the making enable us to reconsider the shifting temporal character of the image, and discuss the way in which the digital image forces us to disrupt the representational assumptions bound up in the relationship between the virtual and the actual; we argue that digital images are ‘phygital’ and are better understood as existing somewhere in the blurred ground between the physical and the digital (Dawson and Reilly 2019). We argue that the diffractive moment in these encounters between archaeology and art practice disclose the potential of digital imaging to recursively question the complex ontological composition of images and the ability of images to act and affect

The social Qualia of Kuml. An exploration of the iconicity of rune-stones with Kuml inscriptions from the Scandinavian Late Viking Age

This article discusses qualitative experiences (qualia) of Scandinavian Late Viking Age rune-stones from a semiotically theorized perspective. Rune-stones with kuml inscriptions receive particular attention. Despite the fact that kuml referred to different material entities, such as rune-stone, other standing stones, and/or grave, it is suggested that they resembled one another on iconic grounds. The quality associated with the multiple qualia was a sensation of safety that resulted in shared experiences that had positive social values. The article demonstrates that the semiotics of Peirce can be of great value to archaeologists who want to delve deeper into the social analysis of things

Masking moments: the transitions of bodies and beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

This thesis explores bodily representations in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (400–1050 AD). Non-human bodies, such as gold foil figures, and human bodies are analysed. The work starts with an examination and deconstruction of the sex/gender categories to the effect that they are consider ed to be of minor value for the purposes of the thesis. Three analytical concepts – masks, miniature, and metaphor – are deployed in order to interpret how and why the chosen bodies worked within their prehistoric contexts. The manipulations the figures sometimes have undergone are referred to as masking practices, discussed in Part One. It is shown that masks work and are powerful by being paradoxical; that they are vehicles for communication; and that they are, in effect, transitional objects bridging gaps that arise in continuity as a result of events such as symbolic or actual deaths. In Part Two miniaturization is discussed. Miniaturization contributes to making worlds intelligible, negotiable and communicative. Bodies in miniatures in comparison to other miniature objects are particularly potent. Taking gold foil figures under special scrutiny, it is claimed that gold, its allusions as well as its inherent properties conveyed numinosity. Consequently gold foil figures, regardless of the context, must be understood as extremely forceful agents. Part Three examines metaphorical thinking and how human and animal body parts were used in pro-creational acts, resulting in the birth of persons. However, these need not have been human, but could have been the outcomes of turning a deceased into an ancestor, iron into a steel sword, or clay into a ceramic urn, hence expanding and transforming the members of the family/household. Thus, bone in certain contexts acted as a transitional object or as a generative substance. It is concluded that the bodies of research are connected to transitions, and that the theme of transformation was one fundamental characteristic of the societies of study

Presenting the past : On archaeologists and their influence on modern burial practices

This paper demonstrates how antiquarians and archaeologists have influenced the burial practices of their times. They have encouraged the re-invention of prehistoric monuments in contemporary burial practices and also been involved in introducing the practice of modern cremation. Whereas antiquarians encouraged the upper-class stratum of society to reuse prehistoric material culture, their nineteenth century successors, archaeologists, turned to another audience. By focussing in greater detail on the earliest archaeologists and their endeavours to make archaeology a subject of public interest, it is revealed how they facilitated the re-invention of prehistoric material culture. For instance, bautas (a prehistoric memory stone for a deceased) became popular in the late nineteenth century, and it was also a category of sepulchral objects that the wealthier working class could afford. Hereby it is further shown how archaeology is an integral part of society, and not, as commonly argued within the history of archaeology, a discipline which in its interpretation of prehistory is influenced from a societal ‘outside’

Walking Down Memory Lane : Rune-Stones as Mnemonic Agents in the Landscapes of Late Viking-Age Scandinavia

The archaeological approach adopted in this contribution wishes to explore the mnemonic agency of the rune-stones through highlighting some of the myriad rhizomatic relations that were generated through the embodied processes of making, staging and encountering rune-stones. It equally emphasises that memory work is practical, performative and therefore necessarily embodied in its constitution

Härjad hög i Hallunda : Arkeologisk undersökning av anläggning 34 från yngre järnålder på gravfält RAÄ 75, Hallunda, Botkyrka sn, Södermanland

På ett gravfält, RAÄ 75, beläget ca 200 meter sydost om Hallunda gård, Botkyrka sn, Södermanland, upptäcktes att en gravhög, nr 34, ca 9 m i diameter och 1 m hög, i mitten hade en kraftig grop, där såväl ett fåtal brända ben som keramikskärvor var fullt synliga i gropens ytskikt.  Därför genomfördes en utgrävning av hög nr 34, då det befarades att graven i sitt utsatta skick snart skulle vara helt förstörd. Gravhögens plundringsgrop synes ha uppkommit dels i omedelbar nutid och dels i äldre historiska tider då den fungerat som potatiskällare. Trots högens omfattande skador eller mångskiftande användningsområden (och därmed mångtydigheter), var en liten del av brandlagret intakt. Här anträffades rikligt med brända ben, flera järnföremål, såsom nitar och stift, keramikskärvor samt kamfragment och textilfragment av silke av hög kvalitet, där textilanalys utförts av Anita Malmius. Utifrån analyser av fynden har gravhögen daterats till vikingatid

Estrid - moder, mäktig och maskulin? : Berättelser om en rekonstruktion av en senvikingatida kvinna

This paper investigates the stories that unfold and are created after an excavation in 1990s in Sweden of a few Late Viking Age burials. The excavation is followed by excavation reports, articles and an exhibition that also showcases a reconstruction made of one of the buried persons. The analysis is made from three perspectives; from the archaeological, the museum and the municipality. It is demonstrated that the stories presented on different levels contain both fictional and factual components. By acknowledging this, it is argued, it is possible for everyone to become involved in the interpretations and discussions of the past. The research paper appears in an inter-disciplinary book where several researchers from different academic disciplines investigate what is fiction and what is reality in a variety of societal areas, and how the relationship between the two concepts fiction and reality is full of tensions

Guldgubbar's changing ontology : Scandinavian Late Iron Age gold foil figures through the lens of intra-action

This chapter discusses minuscule gold foil figures from the Scandinavian Late Iron Age anddemonstrates how the figures are continuously in the making, rather than being still representations of gods. In the past, the figures’ affectual qualities, such as their small size, their shininess and their human-like and foldable character, invited play and experimentation, stressing the figures’ ongoingness. Equally, their capacities to be simultaneously image,object and component allowed them to be reconfigured into new arrangements, stressing their fractal, emerging and open-ended character. By contrast, in the present, they become ‘victims’ of representationalist thought, through the framing and boundary making practices set up by for instance museums, keeping the figures in complete motionlessness. Instead, itis only through the help of different apparatuses (digital photography, copying etc.), that theybecome generative and are in the making in the present, stressing that we today to a greaterextent deal with gold foil figures’ hauntology, rather than their ontology