Gardeła, L. (2011) Rethinking Viking Age 'Deviant Burials', In. Abstracts. European Association of Archaeologists. 17th Annual Meeting. 14-18 September 2011. Oslo-Norway, Oslo, 50 more

European Association of Archaeologists placement of the body or grave constructions. The paper takes up this relevant issue and proposes some possible explanations. The issue is discussed and explored in the light of anthropological and archeological materials from row cemeteries in Poland, which are characterized by inhumation burial rite and presence of grave goods. Rethinking Viking Age 'Deviant Burials' Leszek Gardela, University of Aberdeen, Scotland In the recent years, some archaeologists began to pay greater attention to funerary variability observable within the Viking diaspora (e.g. Callmer, Svanberg, Price). It has been noted that it is simply not enough to distinguish just two basic categories of burial - cremation and inhumation - and that there is a great variety in regards to both the external and internal composition of the graves. In order to better understand this variability new questions began to be asked and much more attention has been paid to examining even the finest details. In addition to that traditional approaches like, for example, determining social identities on the basis of the grave-goods also have been seriously put to question and ideas such as the archaeology of remembrance began to be considered (e.g. Williams). This paper does not seek to provide an explanation for the immense variability of Viking Age burial practices. Rather, it focuses on one of their categories, usually labeled as 'deviant burials'. In the Viking Age archaeology such 'deviant burials' include, for example, cases where the dead are found decapitated, dismembered or crushed with large stones. Usually the category of a Viking Age 'deviant burials' refers to inhumations, and for some reason cremations are generally not analyzed in this context. In my discussion I wish to reconsider the very notion of a 'deviant burial' in the Viking Age. I will argue that every burial was in some way special and the 'odd' (to our eyes) burial rites need not necessarily mark out the burials of social outcasts, criminals or ritual specialists - as has often been suggested. Instead of speaking of 'deviant burials', we should look more broadly or contextually and consider their ambivalence or even multi-valence. In the past, the funeral and the final composition of the grave, which came as a result of a complex array of actions, may have been understood in multiple ways by those who participated in the ceremonies. Today, the messages which could be read from the burials are far from being straightforward and therefore w must be open to acknowledging the subtleties and notions of individuality with which they were endowed. It must also be taken into consideration, that there may have been many factors leading to a particular form of burial although these factors are not always visible to the excavators or the interpreters of archaeological material. Therefore, we should not limit ourselves only to the considerations of what we see in the 'static' grave today, but also be more open to speculations on all the 'dynamic' aspects that were present at the graveside in the past - the sights, the sounds, the smell. As some have argued, a funeral was a multi-media experience and its meanings and reception may have been manifold. In order to better illustrate my arguments on ambivalence and individuality, the paper will be supple- mented by new artistic reconstructions of Viking Age graves, which have been commissioned for my PhD project at the Department of Archaeology in Aberdeen. Session: 10. Women on the Move: The Scientific and Archaeological Evidence for Female Mobility in the Past Organisers: Keri Brown, University of Manchester, United Kingdom Janet Montgomery, Durham University, United Kingdom Session abstract: Male mobility has been cited as a factor in the spread of prehistoric technology and material culture in Europe. The heroic travels of smiths, traders, warriors and seafarers have been seen as instrumental in the transmission of knowledge and the formation of connections between elite groups in different parts of the Old World. This viewpoint is emphasised in studies of European Bronze Age societies, for example. However the scientific evidence for female mobility is very strong in all periods of the past. Both mitochondrial (mt) DNA analysis and strontium and oxygen isotopic analysis have shown that individual women also moved locations during their lifetime. Somehow there seems to be very little archaeological