In the Darkest of Days

Exploring Human Sacrifice and Value in Southern Scandinavian Prehistory

Matthew J. Walsh, Sean O'Neill, Lasse Sørensen, Matthew J. Walsh, Sean O'Neill, Lasse Sørensen

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789258615
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Social Sciences

This book collects recent works on the subjects of sacrificial offerings, ritualized violence and the relative values thereof in the contexts of Scandinavian prehistory from the Neolithic to the Viking era. The volume builds on a workshop hosted at the National Museum of Denmark in 2018 which inaugurated the beginning of the research project 'Human Sacrifice and Value: The limits of sacred violence' and was supported by the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. The volume brings together research and perspectives that attempt to go beyond the who, what and where of most archaeological and anthropological investigations of sacrificial violence to address both the underlying and explicit forms of value associated with such events. The volume re-opens investigations into notions of value relating to diverse evidence and suggested evidence for human sacrifice and related ritualized violence. It covers a broad spectrum of issues relating to novel interpretations of the existing archaeological materials, but with a focus on the study of value and value dynamics in these diverse ritual contexts, engaging in questions of identity, cosmology, economics and social relations. Cases span from the Scandinavian Late Neolithic and Nordic Bronze Age, through to the well-known wetland deposits and bog bodies of the Iron Age, to Viking era executions, 'deviant' burials and contemporaneous double/multiple graves, exploring the implications for the transformation of sacrificial practices across Scandinavian prehistory. Each contribution attempts to untangle the myriad forms of value at play in different incarnations of human offerings, and provide insights into how those values were expressed, e.g., in the selection and treatment of victims in relation to their status, personhood, identity and life-history.

Table of contents

• In The Darkest Of Days
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures, plates and tables
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction: In the Darkest of Days: Tracing human sacrifice in southern Scandinavian prehistory
• 1 Noble hunter-gatherers and ‘cruel’ farmers – a discussion of the evidence of human sacrifices during the Mesolithic and Neolithic in South Scandinavia
• 2 Societies that sacrifice? Examining the potential for attendant sacrifices in the Nordic Bronze Age
• 3 Human sacrifices and human remains – ultimate sacrifices?
• 4 Naked or clothed? Bog bodies and the value of clothing in the Late Iron Age
• 5 Human sacrifice and execution? A brief forensic medical and archaeological perspective on some of the Danish bog bodies
• 6 Six human skulls in a bog: Svennum – a 1st to 3rd century AD sacrificial bog
• 7 Haraldskær Woman under a new light: Bog bodies, martial rituals and value
• 8 Figuring out bodies in bogs and other watery places: Posthumanism, figurations and ecological relations
• 9 Thrown stone for flesh and bone? ‘White’ stones in sacrificial context in Iron Age Scandinavia
• 10 ‘Better not to pray than to sacrifice too much’: 1 Human sacrifice and its alternatives in Northern Europe AD 750–1050
• 11 Regulated deviancy – ritual executions at Viking Age Tissø as indications of a complex judicial culture
• 12 Human sacrifice in Old Norse skaldic poetry