Medeltida ödeläggelse i Sverige : En litteraturstudie över resiliens och medeltidsarkeologisk forskning utförd på den senmedeltida agrarkrisen

Sammanfattning: The late medieval agrarian crisis is characterized by a sharp decline in population which caused farm abandonment and mass death. The crisis arose due to a lack of access to arable land and insufficient food production in relation to the growing population. However, there is evidence of villages and farms surviving the crisis by adapting to new conditions through the development of sustainable structures. Studying the literature from a resilience theoretical perspective, this paper discusses existing opportunities to study the agrarian crisis, opening avenues for future research. More specifically, this study contributes to the literature by examining studies on abandoned and surviving farms from Jämtland, Östergötland, Småland, Värmland and Skåne, concerning the interpretive possibilities of the farm's survival. The results suggest that Medieval archaeology excels in increasing knowledge about human behaviour and the relationship to the environment from a long-term perspective. Resilience theory can provide an interdisciplinary framework, increasing the understanding of social-ecological systems, therefore ensuring the sustainability of ecosystem services. Moreover, the findings of this thesis suggest that pollen analysis and dendrochronology are commonly used in research on the agrarian crisis. The methods reveal that common survival strategies consisted of introducing less labour-intensive farming methods or taking over the lands of desolate farms. Additionally, farms that had access to natural resources, cooperated with other farms on open land and had larger households most often survived the crisis.