In the second half of the 20th century, Sweden underwent a major expansion of hydropower. It was preceded by archaeological surveys, which discovered many previously unidentified settlement sites in the northern parts of the country. However, it was not long before the sites were drowned following the construction of dams to create hydropower reservoirs. Farms and villages were flooded and the people who lived there were forced to move away. In some places, special new communities were built to house those hydropower construction workers; when finished, the communities were abandoned and the workforce moved on to the next location. The expansion of hydropower echoed the ancient flood myths about how something old must perish for something new to be created.

En stenyxa, en så kallad torvigg, ansågs under 1800-talet så viktig som lyckobringare att den i samband med ett arvsskifte sönderdelades så att arvingarna fick varsin del.

During the last decades of the 20th century, a number of rock carvings with unique motifs were discovered in western Sweden. The petroglyphs were of an unmistakable ancient character and seemed to provide a quite different image of Bronze Age society in Southern Scandinavia. Instead of the established archaeological picture of a strongly stratified society with focus on bronze and weapons the newfound carvings mediated a happy and harmonious vision of the period. The rock carvings were discovered by the one and same person who was a well-established amateur archaeologist specialised in finding previously unknown prehistoric petroglyphs and as such repeatedly employed by the Swedish National Heritage Board. Now it turns out that it by all accounts was he himself who made the unique petroglyphs in order to give a different picture of Bronze Age society. He chose a congenial way of expressing himself and his carvings are de facto petroglyphs that appear to repeal the chronological border between past and present. Today the carvings constitute an unruly heritage that is difficult to handle by archaeological research as well as cultural heritage management.

Texten introducerar festskriften till professor Bjørnar Julius Olsen vid Universitetet i Tromsø och presenterar hans arkeologiska gärning. I underkapitlet "Formative years" diskuteras den anda av teoretiskt samförstånd som etablerades mellan en generation yngre arkeologiska forskare i Tromsø och Stockholm i slutet av 1980-talet och början av -90-talet. Särskilt uppmärksammas det motstånd som de nya, så kallat postprocessuella idéerna möttes med från akademiskt väletablerade arkeologer.

Arkeologins relation till tid har förändrats under historiens gång. Ett tidigt fokus på datering och kronologi sammanföll med en allmän upptagenhet med tid under det sena 1800-talet. Arkeologins intressen har vidgats från att initialt riktats mot förhistorien till att numera inkludera såväl samtiden som framtiden. På grund av tingens beständighet över tid kan de vara brukade och betydelsebärande under fler epoker än under sin tillkomsttid vilket komplicerar frågan om deras datering.

After Discourse is an interdisciplinary response to the recent trend away from linguistic and textual approaches and towards things and their affects.

The new millennium brought about serious changes to the intellectual landscape.Favoured approaches associated with the linguistic and the textual lost some oftheir currency, and were followed by a new curiosity and concern for things andtheir natures. Gathering contributions from archaeology, heritage studies, history,geography, literature, and philosophy, After Discourse offers a range of reflections on what things are, how we become affected by them, and the ethical concernsthey give rise to. Through a varied constellation of case studies, it explores ways of dealing with matters which fall outside, become othered from, or simply cannot begrasped through perspectives derived solely from language and discourse.

After Discourse provides challenging new perspectives for scholars and studentsinterested in other-than-textual encounters between people and the objects withwhich we share the world. 

Att med hjälp av alternativa fakta ifrågasätta vetenskaplig kunskap är ett omdebatterat samtidsfenomen. I en aktuell tv-serie, The American Runestone, används det också i syfte att skriva om historien. Serien fogar in sig i en samtida subkultur som kännetecknas av vetenskapsförakt och ogenerat bruk av alternativa fakta.

This chapter traces the background of the stranded stones which leads to more general reflections concerning the ‘correct’ place of things as well as what kind of objects may be of archaeological concern. Ballast is what gives ship stability, preventing it from capsizing when it is not sufficiently laden with cargo. Large quantities of ballast flint have been found at archaeological excavations across Newfoundland, including in Ferryland, a British settlement dating from 1621, where an extensive study has been underway since 1992. Lindroth examined the spread in Europe of the species of ground beetle that were introduced to Newfoundland in ship ballast. He found that all species were present in the places where ballast was taken in south-west England, and therefore they probably also originated from the region. In many places, today’s flora and fauna are an effect of the movement of ship ballast.