Pieces of the past, fragments for the future – broken metalwork in Nordic Late Bronze Age hoards as memorabilia?
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2023
- handle: 10670/1.vojm1w
- isbn: 9781003350026
- hal: hal-04519842
- doi: 10.4324/9781003350026-19
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info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.4324/9781003350026-19
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ , info:eu-repo/semantics/OpenAccess
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Anna Sörman, « Pieces of the past, fragments for the future – broken metalwork in Nordic Late Bronze Age hoards as memorabilia? », HAL-SHS : archéologie, ID : 10.4324/9781003350026-19
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Résumé
Large quantities of hoarded metalwork were intentionally buried or drowned in landscapes throughout Bronze Age Europe. In the Late Bronze Age (LBA; c. 1100–500 BCE), southern Scandinavia, like elsewhere, a significant part of the bronze objects deposited in hoards were broken. Depositions dominated by fragments are often called ‘scrap hoards’. Traditionally, these have been understood as raw material stocks for recycling or trade, but investigations in other regions have complicated this picture and hinted at their values and meanings beyond commodification. This study discusses a small selection of such hoards from modern-day Sweden, raising issues of temporality, the object types represented and properties of the fragments included. The results show that some object types were more often subjected to fragmentation than others and that most fragments are recognizable, meaning that they can be attributed to the original object type. Some hoarded ‘scrap’ could probably be understood as memorabilia – a medium allowing for strategic reuse and manipulation of legacies, ancestry and prestige in LBA communities. These observations open the door for new questions regarding the value, use and curation of broken bronzes in the Nordic Bronze Age and also stimulate wider questions about the different properties of fragments from different types of wholes.