In the landscape, there are many different types of material remains that constitute the traces of human activity in the past. These traces can provide clues to the life, conditions and thoughts of the people of that time. In my dissertation Härskaridentiteter i liv och död: maktuttryck och maktstrategier i Västergötland under vendel- och vikingatid, I want to use status graves and the social elites' living and representation environments to study these elites' strategies for achieving the possibility to exercise power. I am also interested in ideologies of domination and the actions required to achieve and maintain positions of power. Furthermore, I want to examine what the positions of power were and what they contained and meant, so to speak. The goal is also to discuss and try to understand the formation of Västergötland. The starting point for the thesis is the results of the excavations I conducted at Sunnerby on Kållandsö in Västergötland between 2000 and 2012. However, Sunnerby will be placed in a larger geographical context, which is why both regional analyses and comparative studies in a broader perspective are included in the thesis. The source material is primarily the archaeological material, but as a frame of reference to the archaeological material I will use historical sources in the form of runic inscriptions and to some extent Old Norse and Old English literature.