Erik Solfeldt
Contact
Name and title: Erik Solfeldt
Mail: erik.solfeldt@ark.su.se
ORCID0009-0007-7056-8602 Länk till annan webbplats.
Workplace: Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Wallenberglaboratoriet, Lilla Frescativägen 7
Postal address Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur106 91 Stockholm
About me
Erik Solfeldt is a PhD candidate at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies at Stockholm University. Combining archaeology and museum ethnography, he specializes in the study of animism and material culture among hunter-gatherers and hunter-herders of northwestern Eurasia. His research explores ethnographic materials (ethnographic artefacts and visual ethnography) from northwestern Siberia, with a particular focus on the Nenets. By employing theoretical perspectives of new animism in combination with critical and deconstructive ethnographic analogies, Solfeldt's work challenges conventional archaeological theories and interpretations that rely on Western ontological preconceptions. His current PhD project, "Material Spirits of the Past and Present", delves into these themes, following his master's thesis titled "En arkeologi av det animistiska" (An Archaeology of Animism), which received the "Highly Commended, Master’s Thesis Prize" from the International Society of Hunter-Gatherer Research (ISHGR) in 2024.
Single-author publications
Solfeldt, E. 2025. An Ethnohistory of Souls and Violence: On the Animation of Humans among the Recent Past Animists of Northwestern Siberia and Animism in Hunter-gatherer Archaeology. In: Warming, R. F. (ed.) Violence and Warfare in Social Context. Archaeological and Historical Studies. Stockholm University/Södertön University.
Solfeldt, E. 2023. An archaeology of animism: On the Mesolithic ‘portable art’of the Baltic Sea: Highly commended, Master’s thesis prize. Hunter Gatherer Research, 9 (1-2), 95-123.
Solfeldt, E. 2019. Gathering Practices in Eastern-Central Sweden During the Middle and Late Mesolithic. New Frontiers in Archaeology: Proceedings of the Cambridge Annual Student Archaeology Conference 2019, p.104. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd.
Co-authored publications
Solfeldt, E., & Naglaya, A. 2024. Rethinking Representation and Animation: A Visual Ethnoarchaeology of Material Spirits in Northwestern Siberia. Current Swedish Archaeology, 32 (1), 135-158.
Lindström, T., & Solfeldt, E. 2024. Beyond Representations: Animating Figurative Imagery in Archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology, 32 (1), 131-134.
Priestley, E., & Solfeldt, E. 2022. Interpreting the Past Through Each Others’ Eyes: Critically Approaching Ethnographic Analogies. In Diversity in Archaeology: Proceedings of the Cambridge Annual Student Archaeology Conference 2020/2021, p. 159. Oxford: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd.