André Nordin, half time seminar: "Arms Torn Asunder: A Study of Acutic Objects from Early Iron Age Sweden".

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A Study of Acutic Objects from the Early Iron Age Cemetery of Sörby-Störlinge, Öland, Sweden
In my half-time seminar, I will talk about what I have achieved so far in terms of courses and other activities, some initial results, as well as my plan ahead. In my dissertation, I explore a much neglected topic: so-called ‘ritually killed objects’, or as I prefer, reshaped objects. Such objects were deposited in great quantities in cemeteries, wetlands, settlements and other sites in the Early Iron Age (500 BCE – 600 CE) landscape of Scandinavia. For example, at the site of Illerup Ådal in Denmark alone, more than 10 000 objects were deposited, predominantly consisting of weapons or martial equipment. The majority of these objects had been ‘ritually killed’. Sharp metalwork, that is, objects with sharp or pointed ends such as swords, spearheads, knives, needles, scissors, and so on, were particularly subjected to various kinds of often quite forceful acts before being deposited: the objects were burnt, bent, twisted, folded, broken apart, cut into pieces or crushed. These were pre-depositional acts that were sequentially repeated over a long period of time across large regions. But what about other sharp objects, such as bone arrowheads, wooden spears, the sharp fangs and claws of predatory animals, or even sharp flint? 
In my dissertation, following new materialist thinking regarding, for example, the fluidity of matter, the de-essentializing of objects, and, most importantly, the recognition that material properties vary over time and space, I recognise the quality of being sharp or having the potential to be sharp through an edge or a point as an ontological property. I term this quality ‘acuticity’, and this will be the main ontological property that I will analyze in my thesis. By building my analytical framework on ‘acuticity’, I can analyze the quality of sharpness across what are otherwise very different materials and different categories of objects. Thus, the aim of my dissertation is to study the relationality of ‘acuticity’ as an ontological property by taking a closer look at sharp objects in burials.
My dissertation will focus on a single main case, I have chosen to work with the cemetery of Sörby-Störlinge on Öland. Sörby-Störlinge is located below the wetland site of Skedemosse, and with its ca 93 burials (23 inhumations, 64 cremations, 6 ‘other’ burials), it is one of the largest excavated cemeteries from the Early Iron Age in Sweden. In total, I have found close to 100 ‘acutic’ objects in about 50 of the burials, and it is these objects that will form the main part of my analysis. While ‘acuticity’ is the main ontological property under investigation, it is not the only one. I will also look at how ‘acuticity’ relates to other ontological properties, such as ‘plasticity’ - the ability or potential to bend, fold or flatten without fracturing in relation to mechanical stress, ‘fragility’ - the ability to fracture and break in relation to mechanical stress, ‘meltability’ - the ability to melt in relation to heat, and so on. Through a comparison of such ontological properties, we may find that objects in the past were understood in ways that differ to our modern conceptions of materials and material properties.