Mellan människor och djur : En studie om djurens inverkan under den yngre järnåldern

Sammanfattning: This essay concerns the relationship between humans and animals during the Late Iron Age, 450-1050 AD, in the Nordic region. The archaeological and osteological material studied is animal style ornamentation and inhumation and cremation graves. The essay is based on a human-animal perspective and is inspired by Human-Animal Studies (HAS). This perspective shows how an anthropocentric worldview and human exceptionalism have come to influence the previous research regarding humans and animals. From this perspective, the animal's agency becomes central, which means that the animal acts as its own subject that mutually affects people and each other. Several parallels between the animal style ornamentation and the osteological material are also apparent both within the previous research and within my own analysis. In the previous research, a secondary view of animals abounds, and the focus is on human agency. But in the study's analysis, it becomes clear how the animal's agency is present. In both materials examined, bodies are mixed and assimilated in different and unique ways. The interpretation of the material is that people during the Late Iron Age thought "with both people and animals" and that people wanted to be influenced by animals. There was a world view were all living beings were a transversal unit, a so-called zoe. Both humans and animals were becomings initiated in a process of eternal co-creation.