Don’t all mothers love their children? Deposited infants as animate objects in the Scandinavian Iron Age

Abstract

Understanding 'counter archaeologies' as taking a counterpoint and challenging normative perspectives, this paper considers infancy in Iron-Age Scandinavia through an examination of children deposited in settlements and wetlands. The paper reports on a data set of child deposition from Scandinavia in the first millennium CE, and compares the practices with cases from other Germanic areas. While a complex phenomenon where cause of death is mostly unknown, textual sources indicate that neither limited emotional responses to child loss nor infanticide was uncommon in the first millennium CE. Infanticide is widespread crossculturally, yet is foreign to many researchers because it counters deep-held contemporary, Western perceptions of universal maternal instinct. The paper questions whether infant loss within Scandinavian and Germanic societies prompted emotional responses akin to Western, contemporary reactions. Were infants more closely related to animate objects than human beings? And did this ontological logic provoke the use of infant remains in ritual deposition?

‘Body-objects’ and personhood in the Iron and Viking Ages: processing, curating, and depositing skulls in domestic space

“…half of the communities studied here repeatedly deposited head-objects in placemaking practices. This echoes practices of depositing children in the same period, where some communities would deposit a new infant every 100-150 years (Eriksen 2017). Although the geographical distribution of body-objects likely reflects preservation conditions, localized communities of practice possibly shared exceptional body-handling activities in specific places in the broader Iron/Viking Age worlds.…”

“…I have previously published on the deposition of infants and children in settlements from Northern Europe in the same time-span as the head-objects (Eriksen 2017). The spatial pattern of head-objects is comparable to, but slightly different than that of infants: infants seem to a higher extent be deposited in hearths and postholesbrought closer to the most intimate spaces of the house.…”

“…Acts of placing a calvaria upside-down in a wall foundation, lowering a child's cranium in a pit and cover it with clay, or inserting an occipital bone in the hearth of a house, all speak to a desire to keep head-objects closeto imbue built environments with objects that have a specific, affective affordance. Head-objects are deposited in spatial contexts that echo those of artefacts deposited around settlements, and may indeed be part of the same desire: heads are, like infants and particularly chosen artefacts, animate objects that are sometimes required in and around houses (Eriksen 2017). A longue durée tradition in Scandinavian later prehistory, the deposition of animate objects in built environments may have multiple motivations, including marking transformative events in people and house biographies, drawing on the capacities of charged spaces (i.e.…”

“…Heads, personhood, and atmosphere 500BCE-1050CE. Of this preliminary dataset of human bodies (parts and whole), collected from publications and unpublished excavation reports, infants (Eriksen 2017) and crania seem particularly frequent.…”

Crossing the Maelstrom: New Departures in Viking Archaeology

“…Raffield (2019a) and Ravn (2012) have separately examined childhood and the formation of hegemonic ideals, though also exclusively with a male focus. Furthermore, Eriksen (2017) has explored the ontological status of infants in the Viking Age in relation to objecthood. Other specific social roles that have been studied include thieves (Kalmring 2010a), slaves (Naumann et al 2014;Raffield 2019b;Roslund 2013), disability (Arwill-Nordbladh 2012), ritual specialists (Karg et al 2009), and smiths (Barndon 2005;Hed Jakobsson 2003;Hedeager 2011;Lund 2010;U.…”