A sense of place at a fen

This paper will focus on a sense of place in prehistory. The chapter argues for the importance of the sensuous experiences of places, and in this case natural places, in the creation of memory and shared conceptions of place and landscape. Natural places played important roles in the process of creating the societal order in prehistory and in this respect can be considered similar to monuments in defining a sense of place. Here a fen in Malmö in Sweden is discussed, where artefacts were deposited during a period that includes most of the Neolithic period.The topography, the varying vegetation, the water table, as well as the deposited artefacts, created spatial structures that were experienced through the senses by those who moved around this place and performed the acts of deposition. These experiences resulted in a differentiation of this place from the surroundings, which in many cases acted as a ritualization strategy for the acts that took place there. This gave the place a special significance in the
landscape. The fact that this was a recurring practice at the fen, also underlines the historic significance of the place. The sensuous experiences of the acts, the place and the objects also created relations between people, and as such, a social organization. Variations in the social identities that were created at the fen during the course of the Neolithic are discussed in connection to the surrounding society. It seems the fen was mainly used by those that were not a part of the competition for the highest status in society, i.e. the elite, but rather a social stratum of society less likely to have, and dispose of, prestige objects. This part of society did not consist of a grey mass of people but rather a complex web of social relations.