making cultural history
Making cultural history New perspectives on Western heritage
Edited by Anna KällÊn
nordic academic press
This volume is simultaneously published digitally and is available for free online through Creative Commons under licence 3.0 with the following limitations: Attribution required, no adaptations or commercial use allowed.
Nordic Academic Press P.O. Box 1206 SE-221 05 Lund Sweden www.nordicacademicpress.com
© Nordic Academic Press and the Authors 2013 Typesetting: Frederic Täckström, www.sbmolle.com Jacket design: Per Idborg Jacket image: The Acropolis, Athens. Photo: Johan Linder Printed by ScandBook, Falun 2013 ISBN 978-91-87351-19-8
Contents Making cultural history
An introduction Anna Källén & Inga Sanner
7
1. Heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there
15
2. A majestic copycat in motion
27
3. Fictionalized cityscapes
39
4. The past is a present
49
5. Tracing the Silence of the Tragic
59
6. The burning of Rǫgnvaldr réttilbeini
71
7. Textus and rhizome
87
8. Unnam’d forms
97
Visible and invisible masculinities in the Eketorp research project Elin Engström Britta Zetterström Geschwind
Lisbeth Salander and the heritage of Stockholm Johan Linder On the rhetoric of monuments and United States universalism Adam Hjorthén Anders Lindström
Frederik Wallenstein
An experiment with two metaphors Robin Wahlsten Böckerman Playing the William Blake archive Per Israelson
9. Google and the mediation of cultural memory
107
10. Paper fever
119
11. The materiality of war booty books
131
12. A plea for anachronism
141
13. ‘And we would like to thank’
151
14. Oral history and the interpretation of the recent past
163
15. Dumps and ditches
173
16. Micromedia
185
17. A matter of quality
195
About the authors
207
Lisa Ehlin
A media history of early modern Spain Adam Wickberg Månsson The case of Strängnäs cathedral library Emma Hagström Molin Daniel Strand
The role of funding in archaeology Elisabeth Niklasson Remembering the Swedish miners’ strike of 1969–70 Robert Nilsson
Prisms of archaeological practice at Kalaureia in Greece Ingrid Berg Matts Lindström Americanism and public service in early Swedish television Tove Thorslund
Making cultural history An introduction Anna Källén & Inga Sanner Cultural history tends to elude positive definition. While such an evasive character may still be deemed a weakness in some academic circumstances, it is not the case with cultural history: much of its strength and analytical potential is to be found precisely in this slipperiness, in its critical attitude to authoritative categorization, and its relentless movement towards new angles, new spaces beyond the evident and the canonical. Perhaps it is also because of its evasive character that cultural history has become a somewhat fuzzy concept, with quite different associations and connotations in different academic fields. It appears sometimes to have the outdated air of a tradition that is passé—as is the case in archaeology and ethnology, where ‘the cultural-historical perspective’ was originally taken to mean the view on ancient cultures as essential units that was predominant until the Second World War. While cultural history still carries that connotation in archaeology, ethnologists in the 1980s reclaimed the concept, saying that they are now doing a new form of cultural history, studying vernacular things and people on the peripheries of traditional history, outside the range of dominant discourses.1 In historical research, cultural history instead has radical Seventies associations, and refers to the microhistorical perspective pursued by Peter Burke and Carlo Ginzburg, among others.2 Moreover, a discussion has recently emerged about a cultural history beyond the cultural turn, which is critical of what is perceived as a too-narrow focus on the small detail in cultural history, and calls for greater emphasis on the relations between culture as a larger, official structure and culture as detailed, vernacular practice.3 7
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Given this variety of associations, we will leave the attempt at a precise definition behind. In this volume we want to make a point of that fundamental slipperiness, maintaining that you can never know precisely what cultural history is until it is actually made. Suffice to say that cultural history deals in some sense with culture, and with history, combined in a creative and often critical analysis. This volume has sprung out of the Research School for Studies in Cultural History, or FoKult, at the Faculty of Humanities of Stockholm University.4 FoKult was established by the faculty in 2009, in order to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and find new fertile ground for humanities research on cultural history. Eight professors from different departments within the faculty joined the steering committee, and in the following two years nineteen excellent postgraduate students were enrolled in the FoKult programme. FoKult’s stated focus is “the change in the conditions of research in cultural history, by connecting knowledge issues with reflexive perspectives. The idea is to study the new situation for cultural studies, as well as to problematize it and develop new methods from several different perspectives. The need for different perspectives is based on the duality of history itself. The past has created the present and is a source to our self-knowledge, but at the same time, the image of the past is continuously created and used in the present”.5 This creative interplay between past and present is key to all activities at FoKult. A different but no less important component of the research school is the interdisciplinary platform that it provides. Through advanced courses, a seminar series, and various social activities, the nineteen postgraduate students meet regularly and exchange knowledge and ideas over the four years of their doctoral research. Having one foot in the research school, they also belong to a university department where they have the other foot in a traditional discipline (archaeo logy, art history, classical languages, ethnology, fashion studies, history, history of ideas, history of religion, literature studies, or cinema studies). The different disciplines provide distinct traditions, theories, methods, and materials, which are constantly challenged and enriched from new angles at the research school. The main reason for the creation of FoKult was to provide opportunities for creative collaboration in the spaces between traditional disciplines. 8
introduction
Now, some way through the process, it is clear that this goal is fully realizable. This volume reflects the ongoing research and continuous dialogue at FoKult, and it is a testimony to the creative potential of intellectual border-crossing and the fertility of spaces between academic disciplines. The ways of doing cultural history presented in this volume share a key feature that we believe is characteristic of FoKult’s intellectual activities, and which is also a common factor in cultural history in general: the focus on the interplay of traditional and alternative discourses. By looking at the canonical and monumental from unexpected angles, it is not only possible to shed new light on what has previously been taken for granted as established academic knowledge, but also to find previously invisible spaces outside traditional academic discourses. This approach often comes with a critical ambition to reveal hidden spaces and listen to voices that have thus far not been heard in academic discourse. When such critical interests meet across disciplinary borders, a further dimension is added. It often turns out that the most obscure corner of one discipline is the brightly illuminated centre stage of another. In a present-day-oriented field like media studies, the deep historical structures of the distant past are one such obscure corner, whereas in classical languages or archaeology the distant past is the illuminated centre, and our contemporary world is more or less unknown territory. All academics who have stepped outside the borders of their academic discipline know that it can be a lonely enterprise, demanding both resilience and self-confidence. Here FoKult has become a resource, where nineteen border-crossing young scholars have been able to get support from others in the same situation, and at the same time be inspired to new approaches, increasing their knowledge of theoretical approaches and methods that are well tested in disciplines other than their own. In this way, FoKult has provided a productive space for border-crossing academic enterprises. And as a result, we see in this volume a number of innovative approaches to traditional academic subjects such as celebrity, literary genre, prehistoric remains, television, and historic monuments. All stem from unexpected combinations and sliding perspectives, focusing 9
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on obscure corners and gaps between the illuminated centres of traditional academic knowledge. Of the general themes addressed in this volume, the first is media. Media has been used in two different but related ways in this volume. For disciplines accustomed to search for meaning in written source material (such as the history of ideas and literature studies), a focus on media—technologies and the things involved in writing and communication—can offer a new, fruitful perspective. Emma Hagström Molin’s essay on war booty books in a seventeenth-century library finds new historical meaning by looking at the books as things defined by their materiality rather than the written words they contain. Adam Wickberg Månsson demonstrates in his essay the importance of paper as a medium for understanding the literary and political developments in seventeenth-century Spain, while Per Israelson looks at whether a new medium, the digital William Blake archive, may add to the experience of reading—or indeed viewing—Blake, compared with traditional archives that have not offered the same flexibility for the viewer. Finally, Matts Lindström demonstrates how the medium in itself is a message in his study of micromedia. Another media approach departs from a traditional focus on present-day media (as in media studies), and uses a cultural-historical contextualization to add further knowledge and new critical angles. Representing this approach is Tove Thorslund’s essay on early Swedish television, using a cultural-historical perspective to paint a more elaborate picture of what is commonly known as an Americanization of Swedish television; and Lisa Ehlin’s essay on Google Maps, where a more common inclination to focus on the Internet as a medium and technology is challenged by talking about Google Maps as a form of heritage institution. A second theme concerns historical authenticity and the ownership of heritage. Here Daniel Strand makes a plea for the deliberate use of anachronism as a critical approach to historical heritage, while Johan Linder is critical of the active role of the Stockholm City Museum in sightseeing tours. Britta Zetterström Geschwind’s essay considers a plaster copy that has become an important artefact in the collections of the National History Museum in Stockholm, and Adam Hjorthén discusses the meaning of two very different 10
introduction
historical monuments in the US. Lisa Ehlin’s essay on Google Maps shows how heritage, which is often valued in terms of authenticity, can indeed be created and recreated in real time by communities of Internet users, while Ingrid Berg discusses visible and invisible actors involved in the creation of an archaeological heritage site in Greece from the late nineteenth-century until the present. Another third theme is the interplay of language and materiality, at times spanning millennia. In this theme, Robin Wahlsten Böckerman experiments with using the material metaphor textus superimposed by a more flexible rhizome metaphor to broaden his analyses of the texts of Ovid. In an opposite analytical movement through time, Anders Lindström takes us all the way back to Greek tragedy to find clues to understanding the New York City art and architecture of Rothko and Mies van der Rohe. Adam Wickberg Månsson’s essay on the importance of paper in Spain and Per Israelson’s on the William Blake archive both work with diachronic perspectives on the mutuality of language and materiality, while Matts Lindström’s study of micromedia, with its more contemporary focus, shows the intimate relationship between the two. A somewhat different theme focuses on academic practice. Either it operates from a meta-perspective with the outspoken aim of investigating and reflecting on a specific academic or institutional practice, or it reflects upon previous practices by testing new viewpoints and new methods. An explicit meta-perspective is used by Ingrid Berg in her study of archaeological practices and blind spots in the history of archaeology at Kalaureia in Greece. Elisabeth Niklasson has an equally explicit aim to study the premises of academic practice in her study of archaeological projects funded by the EU. A metaperspective is also used by Elin Engström in her essay on visible and invisible masculinities in the history of archaeology at Eketorp, and by Britta Zetterström Geschwind following the giant plaster copy of the Lion of Piraeus through the history, and the corridors, of the National History Museum in Stockholm. Frederik Wallenstein, on the other hand, reflects on past academic practices in the history of religion by treating Icelandic sagas as a source material for culturalhistorical analysis. Robin Wahlsten Böckerman and Anders Lindström take a similarly outside view by applying theoretical and conceptual 11
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frameworks from another temporal space on their objects, the texts of Ovid and the art and architecture of Rothko and Mies van der Rohe. Focusing on the more recent past, Robert Nilsson advocates the use of oral history as a new perspective in studying a Swedish miners’ strike. The fifth and final theme is politics and history. This theme deals with questions of representation and power, and views science and academia as cultural phenomena related to discourses, be they political, gender, and so on. Robert Nilsson’s essay on the miners’ strike has a double political focus, for it not only deals with a politically important event in Swedish history, but the oral history approach also addresses issues of representation and power in academic practice. Elisabeth Niklasson’s essay on the EU funding of archaeology also deals with the politics of historical narratives in a very direct sense. Daniel Strand’s interest is political in a different sense, with his suggestion that heritage objects should be used with explicit political aims. And with yet another approach, showing how television programmes that are considered essentially Swedish are in fact imported American formats, Tove Thorslund complicates the notion of national heritage. On a similar note, Adam Hjorthén demonstrates how notions of national identity and transnational relations have an impact on the use and perception of monuments, while Emma Hagström Molin’s study of war booty further complicates the concept of national heritage. Elin Engström focuses instead on the politics of gender and identity in her study of masculinity among archaeologists and how that relates to images of prehistoric people on Öland, and Frederik Wallenstein uses a similar perspective to study male identities in the Icelandic sagas. And finally, Johan Linder formulates a twofold critique of commercialism and gender issues in the official heritage politics of the Stockholm City Museum in his essay on the Millennium sightseeing tours. All these ways of doing cultural history are ultimately concerned with the politics and poetics of history and culture. By finding new viewpoints outside their disciplines’ boundaries, by crossing borders and moving between academic spaces that are otherwise rarely connected, these young scholars all demonstrate the value of situated academic knowledge.6 And with a view of academic knowledge as 12
introduction
situated—as a partial perspective—follows the realization that all narratives, representations, and claims of culture and history are in some sense political. The seventeen essays in this volume demonstrate how a shifting kaleidoscope of the academic subjects makes new knowledge possible, and enables the formulation of new critical questions. Challenging, disturbing, inspirational, these essays all make cultural history.
Acknowledgements All the essays of this volume have been peer reviewed by experts at universities and cultural institutions around the world. We want to extend our warmest thanks to all the reviewers for their important and much appreciated contributions to the end result. Our heartfelt thanks also to W. J. T. Mitchell who read and gave valuable comments on early drafts of all the essays at a workshop in September 2012.
Notes
1 Hunt 1989. 2 For example, Burke 2004; Ginzburg 1980. 3 Bonnell & Hunt 1999; Ekström 2009. 4 FoKult 2011. 5 Ibid., s.v. ‘Programme’. 6 Haraway 1988.
References Bonnell, Victoria E. & Hunt, Lynn A. (Eds.) 1999. Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Burke, Peter 2004. What is Cultural History? Oxford: Polity Press. Ekström, Anders 2009. Representation och materialitet. Introduktioner till kulturhistorien. Nora: Nya Doxa. FoKult 2011. ‘Research School of Studies in Cultural History at Stockholm University’, available at <http://www.fokult.su.se/english/>, accessed 3 April 2013. Ginzburg, Carlo 1980. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. London: Routledge. Haraway, Donna 1988. Situated Knowledges. The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies 14:3, pp. 575–599. Hunt, Lynn (Ed.) 1989. The New Cultural History. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press.
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chapter 1
Heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there Visible and invisible masculinities in the Eketorp research project Elin Engström More than fifty years ago, a young man with thick auburn hair and a proud smile stood in a clearing in the heavy forest of central Öland. He had just freed the prehistoric ring-fort of Ismanstorp from a dense cover of undergrowth and forest. For the first time in centuries one could see it in its entirety with the 88 house-foundations arranged in a unique plan within the circular ramparts. This was typical of Mårten Stenberger in his lifelong struggle to lay bare the facts of prehistory and to liberate them from the undergrowth of false and incomplete judgements, so that all could easily see and discern the facts and the truth.1
This essay seeks to explore the aspects of masculinities present in the archaeological excavation of the prehistoric fortification at Eketorp, on the Swedish Baltic island of Öland. The description of the initiator of the Eketorp research project, Professor Mårten Stenberger (1898–1973), appears in the first volume of the Eketorp excavation report, published in 1976. The highly respectful tone and almost poetic description are prime examples of the material to be considered here, in exploring how visible and invisible notions of masculinity in archaeological interpretations are connected to the social dimensions of archaeological practice itself. 15
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Figure 1. The Eketorp excavation 1973. Photo: Erik Björnänger, ATA.
Thick auburn hair and a proud smile It could be said that Stenberger was an iconic archaeologist, compar able to international icons such as Heinrich Schliemann and Howard Carter and fictional characters such as Indiana Jones, who represent popular images of the archaeologist making stunning revelations through adventurous fieldwork. As dedicated explorers, they unearth the hidden stories of the past, and as a result embody the roles of national hero and guardian of the past.2 Certainly, Stenberger was held in high esteem and featured prominently in all the accounts of the Eketorp excavations. This tribute perhaps can be partly explain ed by Stenberger’s unexpected death before the excavations were complete. The research reports on the Eketorp excavations should thus be understood as memorializing Stenberger’s last archaeological venture, and the research project itself has come to be strongly associated with Mårten Stenberger’s name. Acknowledging this intimate connection between individual archaeologists and their projects is neither new nor unique; the history of archaeology has been widely criticized for being the his16
heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there
tory of great men to the point of exclusion.3 Similarly, attempts to make gender dimensions visible in archaeological research have often focused on engendering women; yet this allows men to pose unchallenged as visible representations of male ascendancy, while they have remained invisible in terms of gendered beings with the possibility of representing a great variation of masculinities.4 Mårten Stenberger is said to have liberated the facts of prehistory from false or incomplete judgements by clearing the archaeological site of Ismanstorp from vegetation. This description gives way to a notion of Stenberger’s vision as universal truth, and Stenberger’s body as an unmarked, and thus ungendered, body with the power to see all from an invisible position. The academic hierarchies that Stenberger embodies also go unremarked. Hence Stenberger, the initiator of the Eketorp project, seems to be in motion, moving through the narrative as a visible front figure, yet at the same time hidden as an ungendered research subject, seeing all from his invisible position.
Settlement, symbols, and the invention of hierarchies The Eketorp excavations, carried out in 1964–74, uncovered three separate settlement phases—two from the Iron Age (c. AD 300–700) and one from the Early Middle Ages (c. AD 1170–1240)—one on top of the other and all fitted inside a circular drystone wall.5 The question is, how do the archaeological interpretations of this particular Iron Age settlement reflect intrinsic notions of gender in their interpretations of hierarchies? The uniform size and organization of the second Iron Age settlement, with buildings neatly placed inside the circular ring wall, soon paved the way for the interpretation of Eketorp as a fortified village. Stenberger read the architecture of the buildings as representing separate functions, with several individual farms made up of dwelling houses, byres, and storehouses together forming a fortified village. Eketorp as a fortified village is also regarded as one of the earliest examples of an organized town-like settlement in Sweden.6 The archaeological artefacts were duly understood within a fixed interpretative framework that envisaged a settlement populated by a 17
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self-supporting farming community. Thus the presence of jewellery was taken as an indication that the Eketorp community, although a fortification, was populated by both women and men. Rather than being understood (as it often is in other archaeological contexts) as a manifestation of internal hierarchies and individual wealth, the presence of jewellery was here seen as an indication of communal wealth on the part of the entire Eketorp community.7 Following this argument, the Iron Age community at Eketorp has been described as being organized horizontally according to principles resembling a modern democracy.8 In recent years, however, the interpretations of Eketorp have seen some thorough changes. Frands Herschend, one of the second generation of archaeologists to excavate the site, now emphasizes social stratigraphy and a vertical hierarchy in the Iron Age settlement. Fireplaces in the byres and the rebuilding of dwelling houses are now presented as indications of an increasingly dense population with a far greater social span.9 Herschend designates one of the houses in Eketorp a ‘hall’, a building usually understood as a setting for the political, economic, and cultural elite of Iron Age society. The archaeological artefacts found in this particular house show a pattern of distribution and a spatial differentiation that indicate that the building was divided into two separate rooms. The inner room is characterized by pottery and the outer is characterized by weapon details. Herschend sees the two rooms as two separate spheres, one female and one male.10 The use of these two categories of objects—pottery and weapons—as direct reflections of two different (and gendered) aspects of everyday life could be considered simplistic, but Herschend argues that in the context of a fortification, this interpretation is indeed possible.11 The weapon details are moreover seen as belonging to a ‘room of leadership’, and thereby the clear gender dichotomy between women–pottery and men–weapon details is translated effortlessly into a wider social hierarchy. The weapon details are not only linked to a male identity associated with economic, political, and social as well as military power, but also by default to the main purpose and definition of the settlement itself.12 Although Herschend does not specifically define the archaeologi18
heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there
cal artefacts in terms of symbols, I would argue that it is indeed the framework in which they function. The construction of hierarchies is based on fusions of a number of conventional symbols of gender identities, where masculinity and femininity are interdependent, albeit dichotomous; so conventional, perhaps, that it seems unnecessary for Herschend to define what types of weapon details are taken to represent the ‘room of leadership’. I would maintain that there are actual differences between arrowheads, helmet ornaments, and shield details, but in the context that these interpretations envisage, their combined symbolic function completely overrules their practical function. Such a use of symbols and their associative connections could well do with being specified and critically examined. Revealing this sort of ‘gender myth’ in interpretations of prehistory has long been at the heart of feminist critique and of archaeological gender research.13 A typical starting-point for a gender inquiry into interpretations of Eketorp would be to question why the pottery should necessarily be regarded as exclusively feminine, and why the room where it was found should be defined as the opposite of a room of leadership. And yet, while these are very important questions, I would instead like to focus on the use of symbols in relation to notions of masculinity. Judith Butler discusses the symbol and its signifier in this manner: The phallus symbolizes the penis; and insofar as it symbolizes the penis, retains the penis as that which it symbolizes; it is not the penis. To be the object of symbolization is precisely not to be that which symbolizes.14
This distinction between the symbol and that which it symbolizes (the signifier) has consequences for the interpretation of exactly which archaeological objects are thought to signify what, let alone what constitutes a ‘room of leadership’. Butler’s distinction also complicates the notion that male bodies would be limited to performing masculine expressions—the distinction undermines the perception of a ‘real’ connection between masculinity as symbolic expression and the male body itself, and the question arises whether or not other bodies can perform masculine expressions just as well or even 19
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better.15 In the case of the hall in Eketorp, where the weapons were understood to symbolize male leadership, it is thus up for debate whether or not weapons should be understood as the sole symbol of social power or if other artefacts did this just as well or even better. This distinction between masculinity and men, symbol and signifier, demonstrates the need to critically dissect such easy uses of metaphors of power in relation to archaeological artefacts. The seemingly straightforward connection between gendered space, weapons, and masculinity, and consequently the notion of weapons as expressions of power, does more than anything to highlight archaeological naturalization strategies of the connections between men and social hierarchy.
Mythmaking and the archaeological gaze What social practices does the hall building reflect? Frands Herschend maintains that the establishment of a hall-building tradition in the Scandinavian Iron Age, and thus also the construction of the hall at Eketorp, reflected a new need for a space for individuality. The activities therein, however, are described as being rather festive in nature: What can be done in the hall other than eat and drink and talk and entertain neighbouring hall-owners, while developing an oral fiction?16
The ‘oral fiction’ associated with the hall and its owners is put forward as an important aspect of the manifestation of hierarchies. The male protagonists of the hall are themselves the heroes of the stories, and the oral fictions, just as in Beowulf, serve to transform their ‘individuality into a public norm’, as Herschend puts it.17 Male leadership is thus possible through the privacy of the hall, inaccessible to the uninvited, although the myths surrounding it manifest these individual leaders as the social norm. It is worth dwelling on the concept of oral fiction to consider the ways in which this model of individuality transformed into a public norm might be connected to archaeological knowledge production 20
heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there
itself. Donna Haraway questions the notion of scientific objectivity, calling the belief in a neutral, value-free vision and claims to see everything from nowhere ‘a god trick’.18 The Eketorp research project is known for its meticulous archaeological documentation together with other scientific methods such as radiocarbon dating, geological surveys, and paleoethnobotanic sampling. These aspects of the Eketorp project are often alluded to as a measure of its scientific success, but to follow Haraway, I would argue that they should rather be seen as reflections of a false notion of objectivity, and should be understood as attempts at a god trick. As Haraway continues: Here is the promise of objectivity: a scientific knower seeks the subject position, not of identity, but of objectivity, that is, partial connection.19
The god trick in archaeology represents attempts to alter, unnoticed, the researcher’s subject position, and thus transform a subjective interpretation into an objective observation—in other words, the archaeological practice provides an inaccessible arena in which notions of scientific objectivity serve as myths that transform the researchers’ individuality into a public norm. The term oral fiction consequently serves both as a medium for the manifestation, naturalization, and visualization of masculine hierarchies as a public norm in the Iron Age settlement of Eketorp, and at the same time highlights how the archaeological practice itself seeks to convert the (invisible) researcher’s subjective interpretation into a universal truth.
The elephant in the fort How then do these notions of gender in the archaeological interpretations of in this particular instance relate to aspects of general archaeological practice? I would argue that it is high time to acknowledge how these dimensions of masculinity are communicated in the narratives produced by the Eketorp research project.20 Running between 1964–74, the Eketorp excavation was one of the largest archaeological projects ever undertaken in Sweden, fostering a whole generation of researchers. The social dimensions of 21
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Figure 2. The Eketorp research project, 1966—leisure. Photographer un known, ATA.
the project have also been the subject of considerable narration on the part of the participants; in fact, the first publication included a whole chapter of photographs and descriptions of work and leisure during the excavation, cast in the form of an ‘expedition’, and intended to convey the sense of unity among the social network of participants.21 Mårten Stenberger is the natural focal point in the first years of excavation and networking, and the representations of him take the form of the participants’ own songs and limericks perpetuating memorable events. The heroic image of Stenberger as liberating the past from false judgement echoes through these narratives, firmly rooted in notions of best archaeological practice, and above all the archaeologist as guided by the scientific principles of objectivity. The clear gendered nature of these tributes, with Stenberger held up as an academic father figure and hero of the story, does, however, highlight the need to acknowledge archaeological practices as well as the archaeologists themselves as gendered subjects. For Haraway, to assume a partial, embodied, and critically subjective perspective is the only way to be truly objective and thus 22
heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there
responsible for your own vision and interpretation.22 Acknowledging these social dimensions thus emphasizes the need to critically reflect on how representations of visible and invisible masculinities affect archaeological practice per se. The excavation complete, the Eketorp research project culminated in a full-scale reconstruction of the fortification and the settlement within it. A museum was built at the centre of the site, and at the heart of the museum is a bronze plaque with the portrait of Mårten Stenberger. This portrait, taken with one of the many songs and poems dedicated to Stenberger, reflects the many layers of meaning connected to the Eketorp research project: We know of a grand Öland fort whose story is no way short. It is long as damnation. It goes back to Migration and it keeps going Mårten-i-Mårt.23
There is perhaps not just one elephant in this room, but several. There are the unspoken, but plainly gendered dimensions of archaeological practice, centred on heroic stories of an academic father figure. There is the portrayal of this father figure as caretaker of the past, quite literally at the heart of the Eketorp project. There is the myth of the researchers’ objective gaze, all-seeing and yet itself imperceptible. And there is the use of engendered symbols in an archaeological interpretation that binds masculinities to hierarchies. The act of engendering masculinities in the Eketorp research project in all respects makes both visible and invisible masculinities truly visible.
Notes
1 Almgren 1976, 7. 2 Holtorf 2005, 55–56, and further discussion in chapter 3. 3 Díaz-Andreu & Stig Sørensen 1998. 4 See further discussion in Skogstrand 2010. 5 Borg et al. 1976; Borg 2000. 6 Stenberger 1966, 214. 7 Herschend & Weber 1971, 192. 8 Hagberg 1974, 38. 9 Nordström & Herschend 2003, 64.
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making cultural history 10 Herschend 1993, 194–195. 11 Ibid., 195. 12 Ibid. 13 Conkey & Spector 1984. 14 For a discussion of the lesbian phallus in relation to Lacan, see Butler 1993, 83ff. Italics in original. 15 Halberstam 1998. 16 Herschend 1993, 196. 17 Ibid., 195ff. 18 Haraway 1988, 581. 19 Ibid. 586. 20 The subheading refers to the idiom ‘an elephant in the room’, meaning how an obvious truth goes unaddressed. 21 Borg et al. 1976, 23. 22 Haraway 1988, 581ff. 23 Borg et al. 1976, 24.
References Primary sources Primary sources are all found in ATA, the Antiquarian-Topographical Archive (Antikvariskt-topografiskt Arkiv), Swedish National Heritage Board, Stockholm.
Literature Almgren, Bertil 1976. Preface. Eketorp: Fortification and Settlement on Öland/Sweden. The Monument. Eds.: Borg, Kaj; Näsman,Ulf & Wegraeus, Erik, 7–8. Stockholm: Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Borg, Kaj; Näsman,Ulf & Wegraeus, Erik (Eds.). 1976. Eketorp: fortification and settlement on Öland/Sweden. The Monument. Stockholm: Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Borg, Kaj; Näsman, Ulf & Wegraeus, Erik. 1976. The excavation of the Eketorp RingFort 1964–74. Eketorp –Fortification and Settlement on Öland/Sweden. The Monument. Eds.: Borg, Kaj; Näsman,Ulf & Wegraeus, Erik, 9–28. Stockholm: Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities. Borg, Kaj 2000. Eketorp III: ett medeltidsarkeologiskt projekt. Lund: Lund University. Butler, Judith 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge. Conkey, Margaret & Spector, Janet 1984. Archaeology and the study of gender. Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 7, pp. 1–38. Díaz-Andreu, Margarita & Stig Sørensen, Marie Louise (Eds.) 1998. Excavating Women: a History of Women in European Archaeology. London: Routledge. Hagberg, Ulf Erik 1974. Flisor och fornborgar. Årsskrift. 1974, Öland, pp. 23–43. Stockholm: Svenska turistföreningen. Halberstam, Judith 1998. Female Masculinity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
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heroes, hierarchies, and the man who wasn’t there Haraway, Donna 1988. Situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies. 14:3, pp. 575–599. Herschend, Frands 1993. The Origin of the Hall in Southern Scandinavia. TOR, 25, pp. 175–199. Herschend, Frands & Weber, Kurt 1971. Undersökningen av Eketorps borg på södra Öland: Eketorp under germansk järnålder. Fornvännen, pp. 186–201. Holtorf, Cornelius 2005. From Stonehenge to Las Vegas: Archaeology as Popular Culture. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press. Nordström, Karin & Herschend, Frands 2003. Det ideologiska inslaget i väven. Trälar: ofria i agrarsamhället från vikingatid till medeltid. Eds.: Lindkvist, Thomas & Myrdal, Janken, pp. 50–76. Stockholm: Nordiska museets förlag. Skogstrand, Lisbeth 2010. Is Androcentric Archaeology really About Men? Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress, Vol. 7, pp. 56–74. Stenberger, Mårten. 1966. Eketorps borg. A fortified village on Öland, Sweden. Acta Archeologica, Vol. 37, pp. 203–214.
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