They Defended Their Rights: memory, strategy and vigilance in premodern Scandinavia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper reflects on the roles of sociopolitical paradigms and memory in the staging of resistance, rebellion and civil war, using case studies from Iron Age through Early Modern Scandinavia. Various event cascades always precede and follow more 'visible' episodes commonly described in textual records, but are largely invisible in pre- and protohistoric contexts or when, as subaltern projects, they are minimally documented. One approach archaeologists have used to understand what precedes uprisings is to demonstrate adverse conditions through records of material and biosocial disadvantage. While this kind of stress can precede disputes, ideological clashes among the well-off can stir rebellion long before embodied suffering. Both types of event cascade can involve idiosyncratic senses of outrage, violation of trust, or insults to honor, and neither type of conflict is reducible only to hunger or money. Accumulated evidence from the broader social sciences can improve disciplinary debates over the roles of materiality, the immaterial and epistemology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Rising Up Against Authority: Archaeological Approaches to Rebellion   •
• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50999