Tidens Vatten is dealing with the depositions of human and animal remains in Swedish wetlands and lakes. Initially we have carried out a survey to establish the record of depositions by searches in museum database and through a questionnaire sent to county museums and to understand where these depositions took place. There are distinct concentrations in counties Scania and Uppland. More detailed studies will be carried out in the Uppåkra area in Scania, around Fyrisån, at Gotland and on Öland.
The project has carried out a radio-carbondating programme to get a broad idea of when humans and animals were deposited in waters and wetlands in Sweden.
The project will continue with the research questions as to who was deposited. It is our intent to map the changing relationship between human and animal depositions in these assemblages, but also to look at the depositions as the establishment of various relationships, such as between distant places and near, between various genders or species. Camilla, the project osteologist is analyzing the material to identify sex, age, trauma and patologies.
The project is financed by Vetenskapsrådet – the Swedish Science Foundation – Berit Wallenberg fund.
These are some of the publications related to this ongoing project
Fredengren, C. 2022 Worlding Waters with the Dead (or the more-than-dead). Necrogeographies. Norwegian Archaeological Review.
Fredengren, C. 2021. Beyond Entanglement. Keynote + response. Current Swedish Archaeology 29, pp.11-33.https://doi.org/10.37718/CSA.2021.01
Farley, J., Giles, M. & Fredengren, C. 2019. Journal of Wetland Archaeology Bog Bodies Special Edition: Foreword. Journal of Wetland Archaeology Volume 19, 2019 – Issue 1-2: JWA Bog Bodies 2019 Special Edition
Fredengren, C. & Karlsson, J. 2019. Mossberga Mosse: Excavating the Archives and Tracing Museum Ecologies. Journal of Wetland Archaeology, 19:1-2, 115-130.
Fredengren, C. 2019. Att möta våtmarkernas natur, en spekulativ arkeologi om offer, mosslik och klimatfrågor. OEI#84-5 Våtmarker och Experiment: 51-56.
Fredengren, C. 2019. Finitude – Human and Animal Sacrifice in a Norse setting. Proceedings of the Old Norse Mythology Conference 2015. Stockholm. Stockholm University Press.
Fredengren, C. 2018. Personhood of Water. Depositions of Bodies and Things in Water Contexts as a Way of Observing Agential Relationships. Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol. 26, Pp. 219-245.
Fredengren, Christina. 2018. Re-wilding the Environmental Humanities. A Deep Time Comment. Current Swedish Archaeology,Vol. 26, Pp. 50-60.
Fredengren, C. 2018. Archaeological posthumanities: feminist re-invention of humanities, science and material pasts. Eds. Braidotti, R. & Åsberg, C. Reinventing the humanities. New York: Springer.
Fredengren, C. 2017. Becoming Bog Bodies. Sacrifice and politics of exclusion, as evidenced in the deposition of skeletal remains in wetlands near Uppåkra. Journal of Wetland Archaeology 17.
Fredengren, C. 2016. Deep time enchantment. Bog bodies, crannogs and other worldly sites at disjuncture’s in time. Archaeology and Environmental Ethics. World Archaeology 48:4.
Fredengren, C., & Löfqvist, C. 2015 a. Food for Thor. The deposition of human and animal remains in a Swedish wetland area.Journal of Wetland Archaeology 15.
Fredengren, C. 2015 b. Nature:cultures. Heritage, sustainability and feminist posthumanism. Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol. 23., 109-130.
Fredengren, C., 2015 c. Water politics. Wetland deposition of human and animal remains in Uppland, Sweden. Fornvännen111. Stockholm.
Fredengren, C. 2013. Posthumanism, the transcorporeal and biomolecular archaeology. Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol. 21, 53-71.
Bergerbrant, S., Fredengren, C., Molnar, P., Löfqvist, C. 2013. Violent death and wetlands: Skeletal remains from Gotland. In Bergerbrant, S. & S. Sabatini (eds) Counterpoint: Essays in Archaeology and Heritage Studies in Honour of Professor Kristian Kristiansen, BAR. Oxford, 199-206.
Fredengren, C. 2011. Where wandering water gushes – The depositional landscape of the Mälaren valley in late prehistoric periods of Scandinavia. Journal of Wetland Archaeology vol. 10, 109-135.
Bog Body Network 