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The 2025 Boyle Lecture explores the partnership between science, technology, theology, and spirituality in addressing contemporary challenges. Reflecting on historical and modern dynamics, it emphasizes the need for transdisciplinary collaboration to avoid cultural poverty and handle the current polycrisis in a world prone to polarization, populism, protectionism, post-truth, and patriarchy. The l
The seven articles of this special issue of Post-Medieval Archaeology provide a background to this paper. Their various interpretations and operationalizations have provided a plethora of perspectives and localities concerning past political economies. This paper aims to further the discussion of political economy and its relevance in historical archaeology. The very many connections between econo
This paper deals with the presence of Sámi in central and southern Sweden in the seventeenth century. The Nordic countries have generally been believed to be ethnically homogeneous, with the** colonial subjects not being present in the center of these empires. If the multicultural aspects of early modern Nordic countries are at all discussed, Sámi and other ethnic groups are understood as peoples
This article analyses the industrial enterprise of the Dutch-born brothers Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their investments in Sápmi and the upper parts of the Torne River Valley, northern Sweden, during the second half of the seventeenth century. The aim is to explore the driving forces behind the industrial projects of the two brothers in a larger global and colonial context. With inspi
This article analyses the role of material culture in the enforcing of a colonial order in early modern Sápmi (Land of the Sámi, the indigenous people in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in Russia). In addition, the article focuses on the unequal power relations created through the collecting and cultural appropriation of Sámi objects. The 17th century saw a rapid growth of
In 1620, the Danish colony of Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast in India, was founded by an expedition jointly mounted by the Danish Crown and the Danish East India Company, under the command of the Danish nobleman Ove Gjedde. Gjedde soon went back to Denmark, but the experiences gained in the colony proved important for his future career as a military man, civil servant and industrialist. The p
In the late medieval period the religious guilds along with trade guilds grew in importance, as did the role of material culture related to the guilds. This history has seen little examination from a Fenno-Scandinavian and particularly a Swedish vantage point. In order to analyse the role of material culture in the formation of this way of organizing people, the article investigates the existence
In recent years, there has been a large-scale boom in mining in the present-day Swedish part of Sâpmi, leading to protests from Sâmi activists as well as environmentalist groups. To the protesters, issues of Swedish colonialism and Sâmi indigeneity are central, and history becomes important. Taking its starting point in the mining conflicts, this article discusses Sâmi archaeology and claims for S
Historisk arkeologi är ett perspektiv, verksamt i skärningspunkten mellan den materiella kulturen, de avbildande källmaterialen och de skriftliga källorna som tillför en rumslig dimension i studiet av det förflutna. Mellan medeltid och modernitet introducerar detta kunskapsfält genom att berätta om dess historia, metoder och resultat rörande de senaste 700-årens historia. Bokens fokus ligger på pr
This article uses the elemental concepts of earth, water and fire to examine the production, use and control of space in the seventeenth-century Wrangel estate at Skokloster in central Sweden. Using a relational approach, the paper discusses how the elements symbolically express a part of the baroque aesthetic, how they were emphasised or pinned down as part of an economic asset, and how they reac
This article discusses fabrications and alternative histories, and their relationship with antiquarian and early archaeological practice, in the Baroque world through the case of an alabaster urn reportedly found in the garden of a Swedish royal castle in 1685. The urn, decorated with a strange inscription, is used to address broader issues of how the past was conceived in the Baroque world, and h
The New World was present in material representations in the 17th-century castle of Skokloster, Sweden, in contrast to the concepts of history and centrality that were used in the construction of a locality of power in a European colonial society. Material displays, architecture and art visually constructed the New World as an integral, yet inferior, part of the Old World. The commodification of t
Silver had an emblematic position in the 17th-century Atlantic world. After the Spanish had discovered silver ores in America, the metal’s meaning became symbolic of colonial dominion, of great wealth and providential fortune. Sweden too initiated a colonial project to obtain silver in the mountainous regions of Lapland. Silver-works were founded in order to refine the metal, and the industry borr
Historical archaeology in Scandinavia is an expand- ing field, but despite its global nature, the discipline is trapped in methodological nationalism. The early modern and modern societies are generally studied us- ing the current national borders even though the ma- terial culture should not be constrained in this way. By illustrating with both theoretical and empirical ex- amples, the objective
