Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality, and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages

Project Information

BODY-POLITICS

Grant agreement ID: 949886

DOI

10.3030/949886

EC signature date 24 January 2021

Start date 1 February 2021

End date 31 July 2026

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 499 492,00

EU contribution

€ 1 499 492,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BODY-POLITICS (Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality, and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages)

Reporting period: 2024-02-01 to 2025-07-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The overall objective of BODY-POLITICS is to provide an original and creative analysis of body-politics and personhood in first millennium Northern Europe. It is the first large-scale research project that seeks to understand political development through the battleground of the body and through the construction of the person in the Scandinavian Iron and Viking Ages. BODY-POLITICS will break new ground in combining cutting-edge natural science methods (aDNA, isotope analyses, osteobiography) with core social and philosophical concerns. The project will moreover provide problematizing research on challenging topics: sexual assault, subalterns as non-persons, and ritual violence, in an era that is frequently romanticized and has never seen more popular attention.

Through an interdisciplinary research programme, the body will be centred as a political medium targeting three core themes: personhood, sexuality, and death. To operationalize the overall objective, BODY-POLITICS will conduct ground-breaking analyses of five interlinked datasets: 1) a never-before studied database of bodies deposited in settlements in the first millennium; 2) an in-depth study of infants, who are situated between sentient object and full social persons; 3) a novel dataset of sexuality and sexual violence in texts and things; 4) body imagery as it exposes body concepts; and 5) textual evidence of distinctions in personhood. In combination, these analyses provide glimpses of radically diverse concepts of the body: of ‘proper’ death, of sexuality as an instrument of violence and medium for power, of complex interplay between bodies and body imagery, and of blurring between bodies as social subjects and meaningful objects. Ultimately, the question of who could be a person in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia is not marginal but integral to understand social and political development. It is a question that would – through migrations, raids, and violence – fundamentally shape the history of Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The implementation of the BODY-POLITICS project in year 1 was impeded by the global Covid pandemic. The project started under strict Covid lockdown rules in the UK in February 2021, and this naturally affected the start of the project, especially travel and recruitment. However, by September 2022 all posts were filled and full team assembled; with regular reading groups, meetings, workshops, writing retreats and other events organised.

The first 36 months of the project have seen the following activities: data collection (153 individuals osteologically examined for WP1 so far, sampled for dietary and mobility isotopes and aDNA where permitted), database work for WP2, WP3, WP4, WP7), publications, analyses, community building, dissemination, and skills training and events. The project so far has 7 peer-reviewed works published and in press, 3 works under review, and multiple in prep.

Collectively, the BODY-POLITICS team has been invited to give three keynote addresses and numerous invited talks, including but not limited to, the universities of Oxford, Nottingham, Lund, Aarhus, Oslo, Cardiff, Aberdeen, Cambridge, Leicester, Linköping, Reykjavik & societies and conferences: Society for Medieval Archaeology, the Heritage Experience Initiative; EAA; NTAG; TAG; and the Gendering the Nordic Past conference.

Distinctions of note include Eriksen's Philip Leverhulme Prize for Archaeology (2022, £100k), Eriksen's selection as a BBC NEW GENERATION THINKER (2023), and her selection as Visiting Professor at Corpus Christi college, Cambridge. All of these are inherently linked with the BODY-POLITICS project; the BBC scheme allowing project results to be shared with thousands of listeners across the UK and beyond. Distinctions also include PhD Researcher Larssen's invited conference keynote, podcast interview, and TV interview disseminating her research, and PhD Researcher Aslesen's invited keynote and multiple publication invitations, both in the first year of their PhDs.

Additional funding: The project/research group has attracted 2 additional PhD students (funded by UoL and AHRC respectively); and 2 additional associated postdocs (1 Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 1 postdoc funded through the Philip Leverhulme Prize) and a new sister project through PI Eriksen's Philip Leverhulme Prize: 'Making Oddkin in Later Prehistoric Europe'.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Key points of progress that are moving our understanding beyond the current state of the art:

1. The first synthesising dataset of human remains deposited in settlements in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia, first results indicating curation, trauma, and reworking of human remains.
2. New powerful theoretical insights into worlds where the lines between persons and objects, animals and humans, those deemed grievable and non-grievable, are drawn differently -- which has already had rapid impact on the field.
3. Multidisciplinary studies of the conceptualisation of pregnant bodies as well as childbirth from Viking-Age Scandinavia; where we are developing new concepts and language for undertheorized bodily transformations often trivialised as a 'women's issue'.
4. Completely unplanned insights into human-animal relations from ongoing work of merging the fields of ethology and archaeology.
5. We are developing the first synthesising study of infant and children's dietary patterns, to help understand gender and status differentiation among children.
6. We are employing new techniques such as RTI, photogrammetry and trace-wear analyses to move studies of anthropomorphic imagery beyond the visual, and rather centre engagement and intra-action.


By the end of the project, we expect to have a range of results from osteological, biomolecular and genetic analyses; theoretical work; multidisciplinary insights by combining archaeology, bioarchaeology, Old Norse studies, ethology, and genetics; new visual tools; and new insights from collaboration with artists. These results will be published in a range of outlets: including journal articles, book chapters, radio programmes, popular writing, and three planned academic monographs.

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