The bog: living body and narrative actant (original) (raw)

2021, CASA 2021 Annual Student Conference Archaeology

This paper explores the idea of bogs as living bodies and narrative actants, in a liminal context. Analysing two materialities: the Gundestrup cauldron and the Eutin figures, the aim is to answer two questions; 1) what significance do bogs have when it comes to liminality, passage, and transformation, and 2) how can we use the bog as lens to study broad, general social practices? From a relational perspective involving a conceptual framework of actant, liminality, nomadic subject, emotional charge, and mythemes, I argue that bogs play a vital role in burial practices as well as other social practices in Scandinavia and northern Europe during the Pre-Roman Iron Age. Considering bogs as bodies, they embody human thoughts, intentions, and perceptions. As such, bogs become not only living 'bodies', but living actants and co-actors in social practices. Based on movement, as common denominator, bogs, and humans are in constant relation and interaction when dealing with birth, life, death, and rebirth. Bogs are also designed as a natural, liminal 'room' involving both an emotional as well as spatial context in the relation to social practices of life and death.