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  • 1.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Acting artefacts: on the meanings of material culture in Antarctica." In Antarctica and the Humanities2016In: Antarctica and the Humanities / [ed] Peder Roberts, Adrian Howkins and Lize-Marie Van der Watt, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, p. 159-179Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Remains of human activity in Antarctica are generally treated in two different ways – either as unwanted imprints polluting a pristine natural environment, objects alien to the continent which must be removed, or as cultural heritage which needs to be preserved. For this reason artefacts of potentially great importance for understanding and explaining the history of Antarctica are removed, while sites of arguably lesser universal value are preserved as heritage. The objective of this article is to argue for greater caution when assessing what should be treated as trash or heritage in the Antarctic. Before decisions are made to remove remains of human activities there, greater attention should be paid to the fact that these remains may acquire value in the future. Building on theoretical approaches within the fields of industrial heritage studies, history of technology and archaeology, my point of departure is an understanding that material culture can be connected with a multitude of meanings and values, depending on who is reading it and when. Remains of human activities can be ascribed values if there are actors who want to include them as part of their networks and in a historical context that works in their favor.

  • 2.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Constructing Svalbard and its natural resources: industrial futures in a contested Arctic space2014Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The Arctic is often envisioned as a future supply area for fossil energy and shipping, a development bound to occur because of the decreasing Arctic Ocean sea ice. In the Assessing Arctic Futures project we have challenged this deterministic future vision, arguing that natural resources are social constructions, constructed within networks of actors who ascribe value to them.

    Based on a theoretical model developed in this project, I will present cases on the construction of resources in the Svalbard coal mining industry (1898-present). How and why have actors envisioned Svalbard as a place for settlement and extraction? How did they build influence for their visions and why were some of those visions realized? The paper will suggest that explanations of why resource utilization in the Arctic occur (or not) is far more complex than the relative amount of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean.

  • 3.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science and Technology.
    Constructing the Past of Polar Futures2012Conference paper (Other academic)
  • 4.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Constructing the pasts of polar futures: the Janus face of polar heritage2013Conference paper (Refereed)
  • 5.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science and Technology.
    Det industriella kulturarvet som källa2012Conference paper (Other academic)
  • 6.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science and Technology.
    Heritage in Action: Industrial heritage in sovereignty conflicts2012Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The objective of this paper is to analyze the role of cultural heritage in international disputes over polar areas, through the lens of heritage sites in the Arctic and Antarctic.

    Over the last centuries, entrepreneurs and states have competed for control over territories and resources in the Arctic and Antarctic. Previous research has analyzed this struggle on different arenas – in diplomacy and in the Polar landscapes, where scientific research and resource utilization has served as bases for claims to political influence or exclusive extraction rights. Less is known about the role of the historical remains of these activities, in current sovereignty controversies in the Arctic and Antarctic. What is the role of heritage sites in the competition for influence and resources in the Polar Regions?

    The paper analyzes industrial heritage sites in two contested areas in the Polar Regions – the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia in the Antarctic, and Svalbard in the Arctic – sites remaining from large scale whaling and mining in the 20th century. The analysis is based on extensive industrial archaeological field research conducted in the Arctic and Antarctic within the framework of the International Polar Year project LASHIPA (Large Scale Historical Exploitation of Polar Areas).

    The cases analyzed shows that industry heritage sites have been used in the struggle between the main competitors for sovereignty in those regions, through practical re-use, by narration and through heritage management. The results show that industrial heritage sites in the Polar Regions can play a significant role in competitions for political influence and resources there. By enrolling the heritage sites into actor networks, competing stakeholders populate sparsely populated places with allied actors and actants. In these networks, the heritage sites can play different roles, defending national prestige, attracting tourists, creating a sense connectedness to distant polar places, as well as legitimizing claims for influence over territories and natural resources.

  • 7.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Industrial heritage in the polar areas as sources for historical research2013Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In recent years, two large research projects have sought to explain the historical development of large scale resource extraction in the polar areas, from the 17th century until present day. Both projects have combined history and archaeology through archival research and archaeological field work at abandoned industrial sites in the Arctic and Antarctic. The approach has a theoretical motivation based in Actor Network Theory; actors appropriate resources and political influence by using rhetoric and material culture, which requires the study of written sources as well as material remains. In this paper I will discuss how these research projects have addressed three of its main research problems using this theoretical-methodological approach: the interests motivating Arctic and Antarctic industry, the design of technology and settlements in polar environments, and international competition over natural resources and polar territories.

  • 8.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Report on the ICOMOS Advisory Mission to Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape (C1099) 18th-20th March 20142014Report (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The World Heritage Committee decision 37 COM 7B.43 (37th session, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, 2013) requested the State Party (Mapungubwe world heritage site, South Africa) to submit a minor boundary modification for the buffer zone of Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape, that clarifies the policies for protecting the property with respect to mining in the buffer zone and in relation to “off-set benefits”. Acting upon this request, the State Party worked on a revision of the buffer zone through 2013 and, as a part of this process, invited an ICOMOS Advisory Mission to the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape. ICOMOS responded in favour of the invitation and sent ICOMOS expert Dr. Dag Avango to visit the proposed Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape buffer zone from 18-20 March 2014. This publication is the final report of Dag Avango's mission, describing the buffer zone of the World Heritage Site, the consequences of reducing it and reccomendations on how ICOMOS should act on the issue.

  • 9.
    Avango, Dag
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science and Technology.
    Elondou, Lazare
    UNESCO.
    Mission Report: Reactive Monitoring Mission to Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape World Heritage Property (South Africa) 15 – 20 January 20122012Report (Refereed)
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  • 10.
    Avango, Dag
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science and Technology.
    Lagerås, Per
    Riksantikvarieämbetet.
    Inledning2012In: Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, ISSN 0349-2834, no 63Article in journal (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
  • 11.
    Avango, Dag
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Solnes, Sander
    Registrering av kulturminner i Pyramiden: Registrering utfört på oppdrag fra Sysselmannen på Svalbard2013Report (Refereed)
    Abstract [sv]

    Detta är en rapport från ett uppdrag vars syfte var att 1) registrere fredete kulturminner och 2) finna och kartfeste faste kulturminner fra før 1946 samt beskrive dem slik de er i dag og prøve å tolke tidligere funksjon. I uppdraget ingick att se närmmere på de teknisk industrielle kulturminnene som ligger i dagen, samt vurdere verdien av tidligere (men ikke fredete) industrielle kulturminner. Uppdraget ble utført av Dag Avango og Sander Solnes i Pyramiden i perioden 21.08-28.08. Rapporten innehåller resultaten av Avangos och Solnes inventering.

  • 12.
    Bergström, Anders
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture.
    En svensk gård på romersk grund: Arkitekten Ivar Tengbom och byggnaden för Svenska Institutet i Rom2002In: Humanist vid Medelhavet: Reflektioner och studier samlade med anledning av Svenska Institutets i Rom 75-årsjubileum / [ed] Börje Magnusson, Stockholm: Svenska Institutet i Rom , 2002, p. 402-410Chapter in book (Other academic)
  • 13.
    Cederlöf, Gunnel
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Nature and History: A Symposium on Human-Nature Relations in the Longterm2015Collection (editor) (Refereed)
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  • 14.
    Cederlöf, Gunnel
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Rangarajan, Mahesh
    Ashoka University, India.
    The Problem2015In: Seminar, ISSN 0971-6742, Vol. 672Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    THE twenty-first century has brought concerns about the future of the earth and human-nature relations to centre stage. This has happened in ways that make the environment as a theme ubiquitous in our lives. Leaders of both the industrialized and emerging economies talked across the table on global warming in Copenhagen in 2009 and will do so again in Paris later this year. This is a far cry from the first UN Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm in September 1972 that was attended by only two heads of government from Sweden (the host) and India. It is also unlikely that any world leader would repeat the words of the late Ronald Reagan that, ‘If you have seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all.’ Today, leaders in polities as diverse as Russia and the US, China and South Africa, vie to win for themselves the tag of being earth friendly, green and caring.

    Needless to add, public rhetoric is not always easy to match with action. All nation states and peoples share the same planet but rarely the views on its future. Stockholm saw a divide between those who claimed population as the problem and others who saw inter-state inequity as a root cause of environmental decay. Today, the same divide assumes a new form. The fulcrum of the world economy is moving from the Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific with countries like India and China emerging as global economic players for the first time in over three centuries. In the last decade, the BRICS countries (still only a fifth of the global Gross World Product) have been the engines of economic expansion. Countries once under imperial domination may differ in many fundamental aspects, but together they share their refusal to pay the environmental costs of other countries’ industrialization. This is the case with Brazil and South Africa, India and China.

    The post-Cold War expansion of economies opens up new opportunities for a better life for many, but also takes forms that deeply strain the web of life and nature’s cycles of renewal and its mechanisms of repair. Richard Tucker’s lucid history of the US impact on the tropics was titled Insatiable Appetite. Rubber and fruits, timber and beef demand in the country that accounted for over 40 per cent of gross wealth product in the mid-20th century (and just under half today) remade the land, water, flora and fauna of the tropics, often in deeply damaging ways. Over eighty years earlier, a prescient Mahatma Gandhi wrote to the left wing Indian advocate of industrialization, Saklatwala, on the larger implications of India following the development path of England. It would, he confidently asserted, strip the earth ‘like a pack of locusts.’ No doubt his words in 1928 ring true, but it is also difficult for any formerly colonized country to ignore the hard reality that political freedom to be meaningful needs the artifices of economic growth to protect and sustain it.

    The fact is that the idea of a path away from an industrial order, though it has many adherents, has rarely won space in the plans of those who rule and seek to guide the destiny of states. Stalin’s dictum that if his country did not catch up it would be reduced to a cipher, has takers in many who find little else attractive in the Soviet dictator. ‘Catch up’ often entails conquering internal frontiers. This has been the leitmotif in Brazil (which saw the Amazon as a frontier), in China (as in the desert and plateau regions) and in Indonesia (where mass resettlement was aimed to unify and weld together its peoples). Surprisingly similar collisions take place at another location of the development spectrum. Internal frontiers and marginal regions are also present in countries like Australia, Canada and Sweden, where extraction of gas, timber and minerals makes few exceptions for landscape damages and local community priorities.

    If the 20th century was about the rivalry of an ascendant American power, with militarism in the first half and state socialism in the latter, there is little doubt that a rising Asia will see more, not less, intensive resource use and higher levels of material development. Will the newly rising powers avoid the kind of resource destructiveness of earlier powers and how far can they moderate their impact without giving in to an upstairs/downstairs world?

    The larger dilemma is how to evolve in ways that lessen or moderate the ecological footprint of peoples and societies. Are there other, better ways to generate wealth in a manner that does not rupture the webs that sustain life? It is a positive sign that debate has moved beyond alarmism and denial to look at why, how and when changes took shape in the past. This is essential for a better future. The past cannot give any easy ‘turn-key’ lessons but can generate insight indispensable for all. We need the long-term view into the past in order for us to find a long-term sustainability into the future.

    Increasingly, this has meant a dialogue across the traditional divide of the humanities and the natural sciences. The complexities of the natural world and human social life demands studies in which we need to understand and connect across the scientific terrain. The interconnection of species and interrelation of the atmosphere and life forms of earth requires an informed analysis of how the knowledge of science mediates human action. The determinism imbued in arguments of how human futures are trapped by nature’s forces needs to be confronted by an understanding of how societies in the past dealt with large-scale disasters, pollution, and waste. Scientists need to integrate complex social analysis into their work. The humanities in turn can gain much by drawing on scientific insights even as they make us sensitive to multiple, often contested, ways of knowing nature. It is not a question of keeping to either of the favoured long-term perspectives into the past – of preferring the emergence of humankind, the agricultural revolution, the introduction of fossil fuels, or the European exploitation of global resources on other continents. We need a multiple vision of time as we understand the challenges of the present. In short, we need to speak across and beyond disciplines.

    This is easier said than done. The planet is one unified ecological entity, a home of life powered by the sun. Yet, it is divided into different nation states. Political borders of nation states (or former empires) by which research is often organized, funded or conducted can scarcely do justice to ever-changing markers across land- and waterscapes. Monsoons, earthquakes, or migrating birds make no exception for such borders. Nor do people. Looking at longer-term trajectories – labour, knowledge, capital, and goods have flowed across landscapes irrespective of politically bounded spaces; they have moved with or against tides and natural ruptures. This has been especially true in recent centuries, periods when the global wealth (the gross world product) doubled (1500-1800) or when it rose fourteen fold (1800-1900).

    But even these changes cannot be seen in isolation in time and space. New historical and archaeological works indicate considerable landscape shaping by use of fire by early hominids, and the colonization of islands, as in the Indian Ocean, even many centuries ago, led to large-scale extinctions of local fauna unable to adapt to new pressures. Not all changes were entirely negative and much of southern Africa and South Asia had extensive grasslands remade by a mix of anthropogenic and natural influences, so much so that it is difficult to draw a line between the two. Even many plant cultivars (yam or cassava or sugarcane) or trees now gone wild (such as neem in mainland India) or animals (such as the grey squirrel in England or the dingo in Australia) spread due to human interventions in history.

    Fluidity is a fact of human history. Economic exchange and human mobility has cut across bounds of empire and nation state. Unsurprisingly, new historical works go a step further and often cut across boundaries of space, time and species in a search for better explanations. Maize, in its march across Africa post-1492, became a major factor in changing more than just nutrition and food habits. The Bay of Bengal unified, not separated, the east coast of India from South East Asia, with migrant labourers remaking lands and waters to create a sense of home. Import of horses across the western Indian Ocean and the central Asian land routes was a major factor in South, Central and West Asian history for centuries, as they were paid for in coin. Domestic animals taken from India for the British forces in the 1890s may have helped the rinderpest virus hop across the waters, leading to a huge dying-off of the wild ungulate herds. On a more prosaic level, the plague virus taken across the Eurasian land mass in the mid-14th century brought demographic collapse in its wake, sparking fears similar to AIDS in the 20th century and ebola in the 21st. Mosquitoes and the diseases they spread played a greater role in 18th and 19th century wars in the Americas than those in battle may have suspected. And the potato and its spread helped revolutionize agriculture across much of Europe and Asia in more ways than any one might have imagined in its native home in the Andes. Plants and pathogens, succulent tubers and sturdy mounts, shade giving trees and edible feral animals, are all part of our connected and ever changing history.

    The flow of commodities and cultural contact has had deep impact on the ecosystems of the earth in ways often little realized. The markets for opium in China, integral to Pax Britannica in the triangular trade, powered the transformation of fields in Malwa and market places of Bombay. Rubber making a trans-oceanic trip from its native home in Brazil was part of Britain’s struggle for empire.

    In another era, much of the Mughal power was built on its ability to be the hinge between Monsoon India, with the rice paddies and densely settled people and Arid India, with wide open spaces and herds of horses and cattle. The Mughal, Safavid, Ottoman and the Ming/Manchu empires in the 16th and 17th centuries accounted not only for a disproportionate share of the world’s wealth, they generated enormous demand for resources from afar. Jahangir’s court in Agra (1608-28) brought in narwhal whale ivory from the Arctic, goshawks for hunts from Europe, horses from central and West Asia and shatoosh wool from the cold plateau of Tibet. Estimates of China and India’s share of the global wealth in 1700 place it at 55 per cent.

    There is still little doubt that the era of European dominance, based as it was on maritime power and control of sea routes and powered by merchant capital, was qualitatively different from many earlier land based empires. There was no one Vasco da Gama moment when dominance was established, but there is little doubt that between the late 18th and the mid-19th century, there was a decisive shift of power.

    Two large ecological changes signified this: the hunting down of Africa’s elephants for ivory to make piano keys in Europe and the diminution of the great whales by steam powered ships with harpoons for whale oil. Less noticeable, but presciently pointed out by a pioneering environmentally minded economic historian Malcolm Caldwell in his The Wealth of Some Nations, were two other developments. The British built the first coal fired empire in history and yet, even before its collapse, there was a qualitatively new power in place. This was the United States which had few direct colonial possessions but relied on economic and military power over other states. More important, its main fuel source was oil and gas. At the end of WW2, the US accounted for 45 per cent of the gross world product.

    Yet, as is often the case, empires not only exploited resources, natural and human; they also created controls, often for self-interest. Trautmann’s recent work argues that elephants as a source of war animals were part of a four-cornered relationship in early India – between kings, forest peoples, other peoples and the elephants. Though this was most pronounced in India by the 3rd century BCE, there were similar trends at work in other Asian societies. More recently, it has been argued that early European island colonies were in favour of controls on land, water and forest use lest changes in the water cycle lead to dearth and disorder. The US, in its ascent to global power from the 1890s to the 1940s, took steps to alleviate overuse of vital strategic resources. The creation of the Forest Service (1900s) and the National Parks (1876), and even earlier, the protection of the bison (or American buffalo) and the treaties to protect migratory birds in the Americas were steps in this direction. In Bolshevik Russia, the early post-revolution years saw Lenin sign a law for protecting rare fauna in 1919. Within a decade, Africa had its first parks in the Virungas (Congo) and Kruger (South Africa) and India soon followed in 1935 with Hailey, now Corbett Park.

    The relationship of power to exploitation and protection was both complex and multilayered. New works show how many parks from America to Africa rested on assertion of dominance over nature by white settler states over resident peoples. Often saving nature also meant the obliteration of rival livelihoods and cultures, a process that finds echoes in the still intense conflicts and contests over access and control. What is important is the deeper historical process that underlies not only conflict zones but also often circumscribes the kinds of cooperation that are workable or practical.

    One consequence of the dialogue of the historical and ecological disciplines is that geography and history are once again on speaking terms. The new awareness that we live on one planet is graphically captured in the iconic photo from Apollo Seven of a green blue planet against the darkness of space. It is also evident in ways in which even specific focused studies in anthropology and history, ecology and planning, now draw links to the rhythms of nature, and the complex ways they are tied in with the consequences of human action. El Niño, first studied in the late 19th century, is now seen in conjunction with other climatic patterns as well as the changing ways in which societies adapted to them. New knowledge that brings geological time frames into contact with historical transitions in the human pasts throws fresh light on well known historical events. Geoffrey Parker argues how the two decades after 1640, a time of immense turmoil in the Mughal Empire, was also the driest spell in a thousand years, thereby connecting dearth and unrest. Richard Grove points to an extreme climatic anomaly in the late 18th century. Peaks of famine mortality coincided with the most severe and prolonged El Niño events of the last millennium. Yet alternations of dry and wet spells or of hot and cold years of the past now have an added dimension, the distinct impress of human actions that may precipitate irreversible change.

    Climate change due to changing greenhouse gas levels, though first debated in 1851, today evokes wider concern and debate. So too does specie extinction, known widely since the cases of the Dodo in Mauritius or the Moa in New Zealand, but probably now taking place on a larger scale than since the five great prehistoric extinctions. The larger impact of the extensive extraction of fossil fuels, of redirecting river courses, cutting channels across isthmuses, of petrochemical production and use – all these and more raise afresh an old question. Will human ingenuity and adaptability (including conservation and environmental repair) prove equal to the task? And a larger issue: are these mere small holes in the wider fabric of nature or a tearing apart of the web that sustains life and ecological systems as we know them?

    Given the rapid escalation and global scale of human induced environmental change, we need analyses viewed in the deep-time perspective. What aspects of our present times are unique and what are common to the human-nature entanglement across ages? Arguments for a return to earlier golden age landscapes, arguably with ecosystems in balance, are now more difficult to find. Human life has always made an imprint on landscapes; ancient societies too could cause large-scale landscape change. Pollen and fossil charcoal analyses in the Kruger and Limpopo National Parks show how human induced fires can have both positive and negative impacts on the changes between savannah and forest cover, depending on the vegetational phase. Similarly, in contrast to today’s wildfires occurring late in the dry season, the burning of lands prior to European settlement in northern Australia was carried out for a great many purposes. Ethnographic sources and diaries show that these happened early in the dry season and contributed to a heterogeneous habitat, favouring some tree species and reducing others, including the animals that fed from them.

    Forests were not only wiped out by the onslaught of human extraction for timber, woodlands also regrew. Croplands of millets and maize, wheat or rice sustained not only humans but also a range of taxa such as birds and insects, small mammals and reptiles. New research suggests far more complex human-nature relations than the simple model of degradation through the process of development.

    Similarly, the deep-rooted misconception that, in former days, people tended to stay in one place – that mobility was the exception and settlement the norm – has been empirically disproved. Or, shall we say, historians have learned to listen more to archaeologists. People move and, with them, also knowledge, goods, plants, habits, disease and any other aspect of human society. Conventional perceptions of societies expanding uphill from the settled lowlands are now confronted by new research on hill-based polities expanding downhill – as from the Himalayan plateau into northern Indian foothills, to form significant polities. The movement of cattle, livelihood patterns, or farming practices alter ecosystems. On larger scales – in marine, savannah, or forest ecologies – they may be disturbed and significantly changed.

    The rapid flux of capital investment has passed like a scythe through Brazilian forests, Nigerian oil fields, and South Asian mineral reserves. Such global flows are susceptible to complex influences, at times causing unexpected consequences. Opportunities for mineral extraction in the Arctic have generated expectations of large untapped oil resources, resulting in researchers and activists sounding the alarm and producing informed responses about environmental effects. But, with shale oil reserves in the US now being tapped and the Gulf countries more willing to tolerate lower selling prices of oil, extraction in the Arctic suddenly looks far less promising as capital moves away.

    The deeply interlinked ecologies of water and land make it clear that rivers are as much about water as about sand. Massive amounts of sand and silt are annually spread across surrounding lands, adding fertile soil or destructive sand. Over millennia, flora, fauna and human life have adjusted. The modern infrastructure of canals and dams can barely contain such monsoonal ecologies. Added to this is the industrial and household sewage that causes the death of river courses as the Yangtze and Ganga, Yamuna and Mekong, Irrawaddy and Indus.

    This issue of Seminar cannot answer these large issues but can help pose them in new, better, more insightful ways. Some authors address the need for long-term, deep history in order to understand critical environmental issues that are relevant today. Others are located in a specific moment in historical and ecological time, but place it in a larger perspective. What do we really mean by words like collapse and how unique is the day and age we live in? There is a less well known trope of human adaptation and recovery from adversity and it is worth asking how far it is useful to reflect on and learn from.

    In a recent dialogue of regional specialists, Peter Perdue, a leading China scholar, was reluctant to view environmental crises as irreversible and pointed to longer-term cycles of recovery as in the case of shifts of capitals and populations and adoption of new crops and practices. Related to this is the idea of vulnerability: is it planet wide or species specific, and can we historicize it to make it more amenable to action or meaningful thought?

    There are certain larger, secular trends that are planetary in nature. Recent decades have seen mounting evidence of the human role in climate change, not merely via the carbon cycle but other related modes of global warming, often related to the long Industrial Revolution since the late 19th century. Less spectacular, but equally critical, is the decline of species across the world’s oceans and in a host of terrestrial landscapes, prompting some to compare the scale of human driven extinction to the die offs of the past, as at the end of Triassic era. A third issue which rarely figures today but loomed large in the 1980s – the impact of possible nuclear war on the global ecological system. Whichever way one looks at these mega trends, climate change, species die out and nuclear threats, the reality is these require careful and rigorous thought.

    Writing in 1962 in a book that would not only warn about the threat of petrochemical contamination, Rachel Carson declaimed about ‘the obligation to endure the right to know.’ She was referring to the pesticides which have, as she said, silenced the voices of birds that heralded the spring in America. Incidentally, Carson never called for a ban on chemicals. As a leading marine biologist, she argued against reductionism and favoured a holistic approach. Our aims here are more modest than hers. The small crew of scholars and practitioners here is drawn from different countries, disciplines and schools of thought. But they share with Carson a willingness to begin with the particular and draw links to the larger general insight in the long view of time.

    We do hope the dialogue of ecology, the science of life and of history, the study of human pasts and presents will be productive. The structure and functions of nature in a simple material sense can no more be viewed in isolation from human actions. In turn, the latter increasingly hinge on not just how we achieve peace with one another but establish the lineament of a peace with nature.

    GUNNEL CEDERLÖF and MAHESH RANGARAJAN

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  • 15.
    De Rosa, Francesca
    et al.
    Ctr Adv Pathogen Threat & Response Simulat, Austin, TX 78701 USA..
    Baalsrud Hauge, Jannicke
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Sustainable production development, Avancerad underhållsteknik och produktionslogistik.
    Dondio, Pierpaolo
    TU Dublin, Sch Comp Sci, Dublin, Ireland..
    Marfisi-Schottman, Iza
    Univ Mans, Le Mans, France..
    Romero, Margarida
    Univ Cote dAzur, Nice, France..
    Bellotti, Francesco
    Univ Genoa, Genoa, Italy..
    Introduction to the Special Issue on GaLA Conf 20212022In: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SERIOUS GAMES, E-ISSN 2384-8766, Vol. 9, no 3, p. 3-4Article in journal (Other academic)
  • 16.
    Dedic, Dina
    et al.
    KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Fibre and Polymer Technology, Wood Chemistry and Pulp Technology.
    Sandberg, Teresia
    KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Fibre and Polymer Technology, Wood Chemistry and Pulp Technology.
    Iversen, Tommy
    KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Centres, Wallenberg Wood Science Center.
    Larsson, Tomas
    Ek, Monica
    KTH, School of Chemical Science and Engineering (CHE), Fibre and Polymer Technology, Wood Chemistry and Pulp Technology.
    Analysis of lignin and extractives in the oak wood of the 17th century warship Vasa2014In: Holzforschung, ISSN 0018-3830, E-ISSN 1437-434X, Vol. 68, no 4, p. 419-425Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The wood in the 17th century Swedish warship Vasa is weak. A depolymerization of the wood's cellulose has been linked to the weakening, but the chemical mechanisms are yet unclear. The objective of this study was to analyze the lignin and tannin moieties of the wood to clarify whether the depolymerization of cellulose via ongoing oxidative mechanisms is indeed the main reason for weakening the wood in the Vasa. Lignin was analyzed by solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance [cross-polarization/magic-angle spinning (CP/MAS) C-13 NMR] and by means of wet chemical degradation (thioacidolysis) followed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) of the products. No differences could be observed between the Vasa samples and the reference samples that could have been ascribed to extensive lignin degradation. Wood extracts (tannins) were analyzed by matrix- assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) combined with time-of-flight (TOF) MS and C-13 NMR spectroscopy. The wood of the Vasa contained no discernible amounts of tannins, whereas still-waterlogged Vasa wood contained ellagic acid and traces of castalagin/vescalagin and grandinin. The results indicate that the condition of lignin in the Vasa wood is similar to fresh oak and that potentially harmful tannins are not present in high amounts. Thus, oxidative degradation mechanisms are not supported as a primary route to cellulose depolymerization.

  • 17.
    Fredengren, Christina
    et al.
    Stockholms universitet.
    Åsberg, Cecilia
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Checking in with Deep time: Intragenerational Care in the Registers of Feminist Posthumanities2020In: Deterritorializing the Future: Heritage in, of, and after the Anthropocene / [ed] Rodney Harrison, and Colin Sterling, London: Open Humanities Press, 2020Chapter in book (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    In considering deep time ethics and Anthropocene heritage, this paper (and subsequent chapter) discuss intragenerational care in the registers of feminist posthumanities and environmental humanities through the case of the waste-to-energy plant Gärstadsverken i Linköping, Sweden.  

    Download full text (pdf)
    Checking in with Deep Time
  • 18.
    Frichot, Helene
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture.
    Part-Architecture: The Maison de Verre, Duchamp, Domesticity and Desire in 1930s Paris2017In: arq Architecture research quarterly, ISSN 1359-1355, E-ISSN 1474-0516, Vol. 21, no 1, p. 81-83Article, book review (Other academic)
  • 19.
    Gullström, Charlie
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture.
    Handberg, Leif
    KTH, School of Computer Science and Communication (CSC), Media Technology and Interaction Design, MID.
    Hauptman, Katherine
    Museum of National Antiquities.
    Svanberg, Fredrik
    Museum of National Antiquity.
    Det medierade museet: Moderna kulturarvsprocesser och medierad tillgänglighet2013In: Mångvetenskapliga möten för ett breddat kulturmiljöarbete: Riksantikvarieämbetets FoU-verksamhet 2006–2010/11 / [ed] Holmström, Marie, Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2013, , p. 25p. 121-134Chapter in book (Other (popular science, discussion, etc.))
    Abstract [en]

    This paper describes collaborative research at the intersection of media technology, architecture, archaeology and museum studies between The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and The National Historical Museum in Stockholm (SHM). The two projects presented are “Mediated presence to cultural heritage environments” and “Modern Heritage Processes and Remote Presence”, which were funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board. The paper addresses the potential for increased public access to cultural heritage sites by means of video-mediated communications and outreach activities. A “Mediated Window” was designed which enabled visitors to remotely experience presence and to interact between two different sites, thus creating an architectural, mediated extension of space. The case studies confirmed that mutual gaze is important to the experience of presence and that a combination of architectural and technical design is required to fully support this experience. Further, the studies showed that a mediated spatial extension, in combination with outdoor public learning activities and participation, can evoke an interest in modern cultural heritage and promote public dialogue in such contexts.

    Download full text (pdf)
    fulltext
  • 20.
    Helen, Andreas
    et al.
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Eliasson, Anders
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Wärmländer, Sebastian
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Metallurgical Characterization of Two 11th-12th Century Single-Bow Shears from Sigtuna, Sweden2022In: Acta Archaeologica, ISSN 0065-101X, E-ISSN 1600-0390, Vol. 92, no 1, p. 176-183Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Shears, being everyday objects, have received significantly less attention by archaeometallurgists than other edged tools or weapons. Yet, shear blades were forged with the same techniques as blades of, e.g. knives and swords. The most common shear type in ancient times was the bow shears, where the bow had to be flexible so it could be repeatedly bent without cracking or breaking. The shear-maker, therefore, faced the challenge of combining hard steel (the blades) with soft/flexible steel (the bow). In fact, bow shears are one of the first tools to be invented, where metal acts as a spring. Thus, ancient bow shears can be used for investigating the history and development of spring steel technology, which is currently unclear. Here, we present the metallurgical characterization of two 11th -12th c. single-bow shears from Sigtuna, Sweden. Both the blades and the bows of the two shears were found to be of decent quality and much better than in older shears from the Roman period. Although the steel qualities are not quite up to modern standards, this does not in itself prove that the Sigtuna blacksmiths lacked the technological knowledge to make ideal spring steel. Shears are relatively cheap everyday objects intended to be used until they break, at which point they are discarded. Therefore, it might not have been worth the Medieval blacksmiths' time and effort to perfect the material properties of steel used in shears. The shears' blades are on par with Medieval-period knife blades, and future studies on ancient shear-making should preferably involve comparisons of shears and knives from the same origins.

  • 21.
    Helén, Andreas
    et al.
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Hansson, Jim
    Statens Maritima Transporthist Museer, Box 27131, SE-10252 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Karlsson, Catarina
    Jernkontoret, Kungsträdgårdsgatan 10, SE-11147 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Wallander, Anders
    Jernkontoret, Kungsträdgårdsgatan 10, SE-11147 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Magnusson, Gert
    Jernkontoret, Kungsträdgårdsgatan 10, SE-11147 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Eliasson, Anders
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Wärmländer, Sebastian K. T. S.
    Stockholms Univ, Inst Arkeol Antikens Kultur, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Ett skepp kommer lastat: metallurgisk identifiering av osmundjärn funnet i ett skeppsvrak från 1500-talet i Stockholms skärgård2021In: Fornvännen, ISSN 0015-7813, E-ISSN 1404-9430, Vol. 116, no 1, p. 74-77Article in journal (Other academic)
    Abstract [sv]

    Vraket av ett drygt 20 meter långt och knappt 8 meter brett klinkbyggt lastfartyg påträffades under 2017 i Stockholms mellersta skärgård. Trots att skrovet har kollapsat i såväl fören som aktern är vraket ovanligt välbevarat.

  • 22.
    Hinders, Johan
    Arkeologiska forskningslaboratoriet, Institutionen för arkeologi och antikens kultur, Stockholms universitet.
    Combined Sulfur and Strontium analysis: a model for deeper understanding in mobility for a specific site?: Sulfur analysis on collagen results, compared to strontium analysis on enamel, from Frälsegården passage grave in Falbygden, Sweden.Manuscript (preprint) (Other academic)
    Abstract [en]

    Investigation of human movement in the past has been of great interest in archaeology. Direct measurements of past mobility have become possible through the application of strontium isotope analysis on human skeletal remains; during the last few years, a growing attention has been paid to the stable isotope of sulfur – δ34S. Not until now, there has been no attempt to compare the two methods: strontium analyses – 87Sr/86Sr – on hydroxylapatite, and δ34S- analyses on collagen; in analyzing the very same objects to track mobility patterns. 

       In this paper the outcome and conclusions of two different studies will be compared: one using the strontium isotope method and another on using the sulfur stable isotope method, both investigating material from Falbygden in western Sweden - a cultural and natural landscape with several unique features.

       This study shows that the differences between the two methods might cause different conclusions.

  • 23. Izaki, Åsmund
    et al.
    Helme, Lucy
    Encoding User Experiences2014In: Architectural Design, ISSN 0003-8504, E-ISSN 1554-2769, Vol. 84, no 5, p. 114-121Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    Guest-Editors angstrom smund Izaki and Lucy Helme describe the work that they undertook as part of the Computational Design Research (CDR) group at Aedas|R&D, under the directorship of Christian Derix (2004- 2014), when algorithms were specifically developed to calculate, visualise and stimulate human-centric architectural conditions'. As an initiative, it focused around three main themes - movement and networks, visibility and space, and behaviour and experience, and was applied to large-scale projects such as an urban study for Crossrail and a massing study for Euston Station, as well as to individual buildings such as the Polish Embassy in London.

  • 24.
    Losey, Robert J.
    et al.
    Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Tory Building 13-15 HM, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H4, Canada.
    Nomokonova, Tatiana
    Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Saskatchewan, 55 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5B1, Canada.
    Arzyutov, Dmitry V.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Gusev, Andrei
    Scientific Center of Arctic Studies, Respublika St. 20, Salekhard, Iamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Russian Federation.
    Plekhanov, Andrei
    Scientific Center of Arctic Studies, Respublika St. 20, Salekhard, Iamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Russian Federation.
    Fedorova, Natalia
    Scientific Center of Arctic Studies, Respublika St. 20, Salekhard, Iamal-Nenets Autonomous District, Russian Federation.
    Anderson, David
    Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, AB24 4QY, UK.
    Domestication as Enskilment: Harnessing Reindeer in Arctic Siberia2020In: Journal of archaeological method and theory, ISSN 1072-5369, E-ISSN 1573-7764Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The study of reindeer domestication provides a unique opportunity to examine how domestication involves more than bodily changes in animals produced through selection. Domestication requires enskilment among humans and animals, and this process of pragmatic learning is dependent on specific forms of material culture. Particularly with the domestication of working animals, the use of such material culture may predate phenotypic and genetic changes produced through selective breeding. The Iamal region of Arctic Siberia is generating an increasingly diverse set of archeological data for reindeer domestication that evidences such processes. Three early sites, Ust’-Polui, Tiutei-Sale I, and Iarte VI, contain artifacts proposed to be parts of headgear worn by transport reindeer, the earliest dating to just over 2000 years ago. Contemporary Nenets reindeer herders scrutinized replicas of these archeological objects, and comparisons with historic reindeer harness parts from Arctic Russia were also made. Nenets consistently interpreted barbed L-shaped antler pieces from Iamal as parts of headgear for training young reindeer in pulling sleds. Some types of swivels were also interpreted as transport reindeer headgear. Based on these consultations with Nenets and observations of their ongoing reindeer domestication practices, we argue that material things such as headgear, harnesses, and sleds are not merely technological means of using or controlling reindeer in transportation but instead were part of the meshwork within which some reindeer became enskilled to being domestic. Domestication of reindeer and other animals involves ongoing efforts, landscapes, and made things, all of which form the environment within which domestic relationships emerge.

  • 25.
    Miranda Carranza, Pablo
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture.
    Programs as Paradigms2014In: Architectural Design, ISSN 0003-8504, E-ISSN 1554-2769, Vol. 84, no 5, p. 66-73Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    How might we synthesise two very different approaches in architecture? One based on programme and another on typology or paradigm. Pablo Miranda Carranza, a researcher at the Architecture School at the RoyalInstitute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, takes his cue from an approach suggested by Colin Rowe in the early 1980s to examine how computation formulates architectural thinking and presentation.

  • 26.
    Mårtelius, Johan
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Architecture.
    Sinan's ablution fountains2016In: FOUNTAINS AND WATER CULTURE IN BYZANTIUM / [ed] Shilling, B Stephenson, P, Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 324-340Conference paper (Refereed)
  • 27. Nomokonova, Tatiana
    et al.
    Losey, Robert J.
    Fedorova, Natalia V.
    Gusev, Andrei V.
    Arzyutov, Dmitry V.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Reindeer Imagery in the Making at Ust’-Polui in Arctic Siberia2021In: Cambridge Archaeological Journal, ISSN 0959-7743, E-ISSN 1474-0540, Vol. 31, no 1, p. 161-181Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The history of reindeer domestication is a critical topic in the study of human-animal relationships across Northern Eurasia. The Iamal-Nenets region of Arctic Siberia, now a global centre of reindeer pastoralism, has been the subject of much recent research on reindeer domestication. However, tracking the beginnings of reindeer domestication in this region and elsewhere in Eurasia has proved challenging. Archaeological imagery is an under-utilized source of information for exploring animal domestication. In this paper we explore the abundant reindeer imagery found at the Iron Age site of Ust’-Polui in Iamal, dating from ~260 bce to ce 140. While reindeer were hunted in Siberia long before the occupation of Ust’-Polui, portable reindeer imagery appears abruptly at this time period, co-occurring at the site with equipment thought to be for training transport reindeer. Training and working with transport reindeer required long-term engagement with specific animals that became well known and precious to their human keepers. Creating, utilizing and depositing the reindeer imagery objects at Ust’-Polui was a way of acknowledging critical new working relationships with specific domestic reindeer.

  • 28.
    Roberts, Peder
    et al.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Avango, Dag
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History of Technology, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Constructing the Past of Arctic Futures: Resource Extraction Sites as Heritage2013Conference paper (Other academic)
  • 29. Røed, Knut H.
    et al.
    Kvie, Kjersti S.
    Losey, Robert J.
    Kosintsev, Pavel A.
    Hufthammer, Anne K.
    Dwyer, Mark J.
    Goncharov, Vasiliy
    Klokov, Konstantin B.
    Arzyutov, Dmitry V.
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment.
    Plekhanov, Andrei
    Anderson, David G.
    Temporal and Structural Genetic Variation in Reindeer (Rangifer Tarandus) Associated with the Pastoral Transition in Northwestern Siberia2020In: Ecology and Evolution, E-ISSN 2045-7758Article in journal (Refereed)
  • 30. Uchiyama, Junzo
    et al.
    Gillam, Christopher
    Hosoya, Leo Aoi
    Lindström, Kati
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment. University of Tartu.
    Jordan, Peter
    Investigating Neolithization of Cultural Landscapes in East Asia: The NEOMAP Project2014In: Journal of world prehistory, ISSN 0892-7537, E-ISSN 1573-7802, Vol. 27, no 3-4, p. 197-223Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The Neolithic is regarded as one of the most important developments in prehistory, a major cultural threshold marked by combined shifts in economy, technology, ideology, settlement and social organisation. Many foundational ideas about the Neolithic emerged within the context of European archaeology, and substantial work has now been directed at understanding how this 'package' of innovations appeared first in the Near East, and then dispersed steadily out into the rest of northwest Europe. Papers presented in this special issue are an output of the international NEOMAP Project (Neolithization and Modernization: Landscape History on East Asian Inland Seas) (2005-2012), which sought to apply two key approaches drawn from European Neolithic studies to the archaeology of East Asia: (a) the concept of Neolithization, defined as a long-term and historically-contingent process of culture-change; and (b), the contextual study of this process via the framework of cultural landscape research. This exercise has been highly productive, and provides new insights into a series of unique cultural transformations in East Asia, most of which have a very different sequence and character to those in the European Neolithic. It is hoped that, in turn, these comparative insights into the Neolithization of East Asian cultural landscapes will encourage those working on the European Neolithic to look back over their own regional datasets and critically reflect on some of their deeper assumptions about the internal logic and cultural content of the European Neolithic transition. Given the existence of so many fundamentally different kinds of Neolithic across the broader continent of Eurasia, the overall goal of this special issue is to re-kindle international debates about how best to explain each of these distinctive regional Neolithization trajectories.

  • 31.
    Uchiyama, Junzo
    et al.
    Mt Fuji World Heritage Research Centre.
    Lindström, Kati
    KTH, School of Architecture and the Built Environment (ABE), Philosophy and History, History of Science, Technology and Environment. University of Tartu.
    Idealised Landscapes and Heritage: Past and Future Sustainability in Hida2014Conference paper (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    The designation of historical heritage occurs on the basis of modern values and ideologies that are supposedly embodied in the cultural landscapes of the nominated area, without considering the actual historical contexts supporting them. This paper discusses the meaning of historical heritage in the modern socio-cultural contexts by presenting results of the GIS analysis of a historical database in the Hida Province (present Gifu Prefecture), as an example, focusing on the observed historical changes from a landscape perspective.

                          While located in deep mountains, Hida villages are often marketed as secluded places, cut off from the Modern world ("the last unexplored area of Japan" according to the UNESCO world heritage nomination documents), with a high level of auto-sufficiency and harmonious relationship with the environment. However, the analyses show that Hida has never been isolated; rather, the inter-regional trading network was the pre-requisite for the formation of this regional landscape throughout history, since it was dependent on gunpowder and silk industry. Originally nominated for its architectural qualities, the Hida villages are increasingly perceived through the prism of ecologically sustainable traditional rice farming. Contrasting historical data with modern discourse analysis, we question the concept of sustainability in imagined past and protected present landscapes.

  • 32.
    Warmlander, Sebastian K. T. S.
    et al.
    Stockholms Univ, Avdelningen Biohis, SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden..
    Saage, Ragnar
    Univ Tartu, Dept Archaeol, EE-50090 Tartu, Estonia..
    Erkers, Louise
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Fröjd, Felicia
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Wahlander, Linda
    Fornbyvagen 4, SE-17854 Ekero, Sweden..
    Johnsson, Peter
    Adolfsbergsvagen 13A, SE-74340 Storvreta, Sweden..
    Carlsson, Eva
    Dalarnas Museum, Box 22, SE-79121 Falun, Sweden..
    Grandin, Lena
    Statens Historiska Museer, Geoarkeol Lab, Arkeol, Hallnasgatan 11, SE-75228 Uppsala, Sweden..
    Eliasson, Anders
    KTH, School of Industrial Engineering and Management (ITM), Materials Science and Engineering.
    Amulets rather than iron bars. Metallographic analysis indicates uneven material quality in Vendel Period iron rings from Aselby in Stora Tuna parish, Dalecarlia2018In: Fornvännen, ISSN 0015-7813, E-ISSN 1404-9430, Vol. 113, no 1, p. 1-6Article in journal (Refereed)
    Abstract [en]

    29 iron rings with diameters between 9 and 15 cm were excavated in 1989 at a Vendel Period settlement site with a longhouse, located at Aselby in Dalecarlia, Sweden. Most of the rings had between one and three smaller rings attached. Rings of this type and size are fairly common at Scandinavian Vendel and Viking Period sites - settlements, cemeteries and cult precincts - but their function remains debated. The rings from Aselby have been interpreted as iron/steel bars, to be used or traded as raw material for e.g. weapons production. Previous metallurgical analysis of one Aselby ring showed it to consist of somewhat uneven but still decent-quality carbon steel. General conclusions should however not be drawn from a single observation. Here, we have sampled six Aselby rings for metallographic examination of the cross-sections. The material quality and carbon content of the sampled rings were found to be very uneven, and relatively large inclusions of unworked slag were common. We conclude that the rings were not bars of raw material. Instead, they may have been amulet rings, intended for ritual use. If so, our results suggest that the material properties of amulet rings may have been less important during rituals it may have sufficed that the rings had the right shape.

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