Size as a strategy II. On manipulations in the small and the large during the Late Iron Age in Sweden.

The project aims to achieve a new and deeper understanding of why size manipulations in both the small and the large format were made during the Late Iron Age (550-1050 AD) in Sweden. In particular, it examines how these manipulations created space for negotiations around people's different identity positions. Central to the relationship between the diminished and the enlarged is the human body, which is a reference to the manipulation of size. The body belongs to a number of different subject or identity positions that can be linked to age, gender, social position, specialist position, regionality and affirmation or rejection of specific mythological/religious beliefs in such a way that the different positions can intersect. Analytically, therefore, the manipulations are examined from the concepts of Body and Embodiment, Agency and Performativity, Identity and Subject Position, and Memory, Power and Forgetting. Size manipulations are a neglected research area that also has great potential. In addition to the material phenomena characterized by reduction and enlargement, the project also studies the rituals and ceremonies of the Late Iron Age at so-called cult sites, in burial contexts, in the more individual daily situation and in the landscape at large - i.e. the places where size manipulations occur. In addition to generating new and important knowledge about the Late Iron Age, the project is also expected to enable the development of both theory and method.