Mathias Bjørnvad-Ahlquist (Aarhus/UCLAN): ‘The social role of hoarding in Mesolithic and Neolithic southern Scandinavia’.

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https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/61065583884

Abstract:
The social role of hoarding in Mesolithic and Neolithic Southern Scandinavia
Prehistoric hoarding has been the subject of a rich research tradition in Southern Scandinavia, although most of these studies have considered it a post-Mesolithic phenomenon. Recently it has, however, become increasingly apparent that hoards stretch back to at least the earliest Mesolithic and that they are significantly more common than often thought – with more than 125 now known. These hoards are all different, likely partially due to the wide geographical and temporal span, localised habits and individual agency, but some central tendencies are observable, suggesting that they are not isolated events.

In this presentation, I upscale a classic object biography approach to investigate practice biographies. This methodological and interpretative approach emphasises the importance of actions making up the practice, the processes of change, and the complex social roles of a hoarded assemblage.

Aided by these new insights, I will reassess the continuity and discontinuity of hoarding over the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition of Southern Scandinavia to explore the processes and mechanisms behind this period of cultural change. Rather than seeing the Neolithic hoards as a bi-product of larger societal changes, I draw upon an interdisciplinary framework built around the combination of practice theory, migration theories, sociology, symbolic anthropology, and cognitive science of religion to hypothesise that these hybridised practices played a key role in negotiating interactions, social tension and collective identities throughout the Neolithization process in Southern Scandinavia.