Bettina Stolle

About me

I was born in 1987 in Gehrden in northern Germany. I moved to Sweden in 2007 and one year later I started the teacher’s trainee programme at the University of Gothenburg. In 2013 I received the Master of Arts in Education in History and German for the compulsory school and the upper secondary school. I started studies in archaeology in 2011, first at the University of Gothenburg and later at the universities of Lund and Uppsala, where I complemented my education with courses in osteology. Between 2014 and 2016 I studied the Master’s programme in Osteoarchaeology at Stockholm University. Since January 2017 I am admitted as a PhD-Student at the Osteoarchaeological Research laboratory.

PhD-project

My thesis deals with the ritualization of animals during the Scandinavian Iron Age. I am concentrating on the period from the late Roman Iron Age to the early Vendel period. The zooarchaeological material from Helgö will be the foundation of this thesis. It will be object of renewed and in-depth analyses. The material will be spatially contextualised, in order to illuminate the treatment and meaning of the animals and animal bodies at the site of Helgö. The presence of animal remains in different types of features, such as burials, building complexes and waste pits provide the rare opportunity to gain an insight into the diverse utilization of animals in various activities performed by the same community. Thus, the material from Helgö offers a chance to study the processes of ritualization, as well as the borderland between the “ritual” and the “mundane”. The material will also be placed into a wider context, by connecting it to the general development in the Mälaren area, as well as to other Scandinavian central places. The concept of “social zooarchaeology”, which seeks more complex explanations to the meaning of animals, will be central in my dissertation.

Supervisors

Prof. Jan Storå, Department of archaeology and ancient history, Stockholm University.

Docent Torun Zachrisson, Department of archaeology and ancient history, Stockholm University.

Fil.Dr. Ola Magnell, Arkeologerna, National Historical Museums.