Guldgubbar's changing ontology: Scandinavian Late Iron Age gold foil figures through the lens of intra-action

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Abstract

This chapter discusses minuscule gold foil figures from the Scandinavian Late Iron Age anddemonstrates how the figures are continuously in the making, rather than being still representations of gods. In the past, the figures’ affectual qualities, such as their small size, their shininess and their human-like and foldable character, invited play and experimentation, stressing the figures’ ongoingness. Equally, their capacities to be simultaneously image,object and component allowed them to be reconfigured into new arrangements, stressing their fractal, emerging and open-ended character. By contrast, in the present, they become ‘victims’ of representationalist thought, through the framing and boundary making practices set up by for instance museums, keeping the figures in complete motionlessness. Instead, itis only through the help of different apparatuses (digital photography, copying etc.), that theybecome generative and are in the making in the present, stressing that we today to a greater
extent deal with gold foil figures’ hauntology, rather than their ontology.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationImages in the Making
Subtitle of host publicationArt, Process, Archaeology
EditorsIng-Marie Back Danielsson, Andrew Meirion Jones
Place of PublicationManchester
PublisherManchester University Press
Chapter11
Pages184-201
Number of pages18
ISBN (Electronic)978-1-5261-4285-6
ISBN (Print)9781526142849
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Aug 25

Publication series

NameSocial Archaeology and Material Worlds

Subject classification (UKÄ)

  • Archaeology

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