The Early Modern City - archaeology between the local and the global

The Early-Modern city, with its global dimension and its universalistic ambition, is still a kind of raw-model for much thinking and much practice on the urban. It is thus important to look at this phenomenon, and study its contradictions and complexities, not least in terms of practice. Archaeology has a role to play here, but has still ? particularly in Sweden - played a marginal role. In Sweden, some studies have been made, but only scattered and rather heterogeneous research is available. No more extensive synthesis of what has actually been excavated has been produced, and this project suggest to look at approximately thirty cities from the Early-Modern in Sweden, in terms of what has been done of archaeology. The goal of the project is to get a picture of what has actually been done, and to look at the quality of the documentation, to produce a status report. This study will help to grasp what is lacking, and to look closer at questions of theory, method and technique in research. Further, the project intends to compare the Swedish material with that from other countries over the world, in particular Latin american cases. Such a comparison is of great value for the understanding of the Early-Modern city as a phenomenon, but will also place the Swedish research in a global field. Thus, a project on the archaeology of the Early Modern city will produce an important research environment, with open connections to a wider world.