Matthias Toplak

In recent years, research has provided evidence for permanent body modification in the Viking Age. Based on the current state of research, we identified around 130 male-gendered individuals from Scandinavia and beyond with dental alterations in form of horizontal furrows, most of them stemming from the Baltic isle of Gotland. We suggest that this c...

Conflict and warfare were commonplace in Viking Age Northern Europe. The transformations associated with power struggles, state formation and Christianisation had a profound influence upon all members of society and led to their continued factual and/or conceptual immersion in the sphere of war. This paper addresses the diverse ways in which warfar...

Several famous description such as the account of the funeral ceremony of a Rus chieftain, given by the Arab diplomat Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān in the early 10th century, mention the ritual killing of humans in the Viking Age. Other written sources such as the post-Viking Age Old Norse saga literature tell about formalized executions as apotropaic practice...

In the traditional archaeology of Viking Age Scandinavia additional human individuals in graves are often interpreted and labelled as sacrifices that were killed merely as grave goods or to follow the deceased as servants or companions into the afterlife. This simplistic interpretation is narrowing down the frame of potential meanings to monocausal...

The society of Viking Age Gotland differed in many aspects from that of contemporary mainland Scandinavia and must be regarded as cultural area on its own, with a distinct identity, traditions and burial rites. While ship burials appear in almost every region of the Viking world, they are entirely missing on Gotland. A less striking but equally not...

Zentrale Fragestellung der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Art und Weise, wie in den spätwikingerzeitlichen Bestattungen auf dem gotländischen Gräberfeld von Havor die Erinnerungen an und Vorstellungen von Vergangenheit auf der einen und kulturelle Veränderungen auf der anderen Seite zur Konstruktion von spezifischen Identitäten und damit auch zur Legi...

The existence of slaves in Viking Age society and the slave trade of the Vikings has been a matter of long debates. While the actual fact has now been established beyond any doubt, many questions remain. The possibilities of an archaeological approach to slavery and slave trade, the extent of slaves in Scandinavia and their importance for the econo...

Fornvännen. Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research 117, pp. 81–106. The cemetery of Havor, Hablingbo parish, on Gotland was in use from the Pre-Roman Iron Age to the early Vendel Period. In the late Viking Age, the local community decided to return to the traditional cemetery. The most prominent feature of those later Viking Age burials was the r...

The societies of Viking-Age Scandinavia have long-been known to have exploited enslaved populations. While many aspects of slaving during the period remain obscure, archaeologists have increasingly sought to untangle the numerous threads of evidence that might speak to these practices and the ways in which they were conceptualised and implemented a...

Fornvännen. Journal of Swedish Antiquarian Research 116, pp. 322–326

This book presents case studies of the SFB 1070 ResourceCultures, which use an extended resource definition. Resources are analysed as contingent means to construct, sustain and alter social relations, units and identities. Accordingly, resources are seen as means of social practices of actors that depend on cultural and social appropriation and va...

Im Kontrast zu der lange in der Archäologie vorherrschenden Wahrnehmung von Bestattungen und Gräbern als Spiegel der Lebenswirklichkeit müssen Bestattungen als hoch dynamische und von einer Vielzahl multikausaler Einflüsse geprägte Zeremonien betrachtet werden. Die können in einem eingeschränkten Rahmen von den Angehörigen genutzt werden, um durch...

The article is a short summary of the author’s PhD thesis, analysing the late Viking Age cemetery of Kopparsvik on the Island of Gotland, Sweden. The cemetery of Kopparsvik has to be seen in close relation to an early emporium as predecessor of present-day Visby, and its evaluation and publication will give new insights into the establishment and f...

The multimodal perception of one's environment is the formative element for the holistic experience of reality of every human being. One of the main problems within archaeology is the fact that this central aspect of human existence can be grasped only in small fragments. Our picture of past realities as derived from archaeological findings and fea...

Apart from the aspect of the technical removal of a dead body, a burial is mainly a public ritual within the local community which fulfills several religious and cultic but also social and political functions. As with other public feasts like weddings, the highly dynamic burial ceremony allows a negotiation or manipulation of the social reality thr...

The role of cats in Viking Age society is little investigated and has been dominated by uncritical adoptions of medieval mythology. Based on literary sources, the domestic cat is often linked to cultic spheres of female sorcery. Yet the archaeological evidence indicates an ambivalent situation. Cat bones from many trading centres show cut marks fro...

Artifizielle Schädeldeformationen als Embodiment einer bestimmten sozialen Identität sind in Europa traditionell mit dem Vordringen der Hunnen in der Völkerwanderungszeit assoziiert. Die Reevaluation von drei artifiziell deformierten Frauenschädel aus der späten Wikingerzeit von der schwedischen Insel Gotland sowie eine Reihe von parallelen Befunde...

The cross-cultural phenomenon of prone burials, which can be found on several cemeteries in Viking Age Scandinavia, is often regarded as a sign for so-called 'deviant burials', indicating a pejorative and post-mortem humiliation, an exclusion of the dead, or an apotropaic rite to avert supernatural threats, based on some famous but single cases of...

The cross-cultural phenomena of prone burials, which can be found on several cemeteries in Viking Age Scandinavia, is often regarded as a sign for so-called 'deviant burials', indicating a pejorative and post-mortem humiliation, an exclusion of the dead, or an apotropaic rite to avert supernatural threats. The case study of the late Viking Age ceme...

Über die Grundfunktion einer Bestattung zur Deponierung des toten Körpers und der Abschiednahme hinaus müssen Gräber auch als sozio-politische Aussage der Angehörigen – als eine Form von Propaganda – betrachtet werden. Durch eine selektive und intentionale Präsentation des Verstorbenen – bspw. als Mitglied einer Kriegerelite – können Gräber als 'Ze...