Overview

Broken Bodies, Places and Objects demonstrates the breadth of fragmentation and fragment use in prehistory and history and provides an up-to-date insight into current archaeological thinking around the topic. A seal broken and shared by two trade parties, dog jaws accompanying the dead in Mesolithic burials, fragments of ancient warships commodified as souvenirs, parts of an ancient dynastic throne split up between different colonial collections… Pieces of the past are everywhere around us. Fragments have a special potential precisely because of their incomplete format – as a new matter that can reference its original whole but can also live on with new, unrelated meanings. Deliberate breakage of bodies, places and objects for the use of fragments has been attested from all time periods in the past. It has now been over 20 years since John Chapman’s major publication introducing fragmentation studies, and the topic is more present than ever in archaeology. This volume offers the first European-wide review of the concept of fragmentation, collecting case studies from the Neolithic to Modernity and extending the ideas of fragmentation theory in new directions. The book is written for scholars and students in archaeology, but it is also relevant for neighbouring fields with an interest in material culture, such as anthropology, history, cultural heritage studies, museology, art and architecture. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

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Anna Sörman is a Wenner-Gren Postdoctoral Fellow at Nantes University (LARA/UMR 6566 CReAAH), France, and affiliated with Stockholm University, Sweden. Her research interests include the Bronze Age – Iron Age transition, craft organization and archaeological theory. Her ongoing research centres on the use and deposition of fragmented metalwork in Bronze Age communities in north-western France and southern Scandinavia. Astrid A. Noterman is a human osteologist and researcher at Stockholm University, Sweden, and a collaborative member of the CESCM, France (UMR 7302). Her ongoing research centres on early medieval mortuary practices in western and northern Europe, Merovingian historiography and 19th century French archaeology. She is a founder member of the Scandinavian Archaeothanatology Working Group. Markus Fjellström is a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University, affiliated to the Archaeological Research Laboratory at Stockholm University and Silvermuseet/INSARC in Arjeplog studying Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic reindeer. His previous postdoctoral position was at Oulu University during the development of this book.

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