Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 34

Þóra Pétursdóttir
Morin, Kopytoff also rests his argument
on a traditional distinction between com-
modities, those things which are
exchangeable, and those things which are
uncommon, unique or singular and can
not be exchanged with anything else
(Kopytoff 1986, 69). However, a com-
modity to Kopytoff is not a closed cate-
gory of things which hold the character-
istics essential to be defíned as such. A
commodity is rather something an object,
any object, may become more or less
temporarily through its involvement in
exchange. As a phase in its life it affects
the identity of the object but will not nec-
essarily determine its future. An object
which at one moment is defined as a
commodity may later undergo “decom-
moditization” and become singularized
due to changes in supply, its involvement
in gift exchange or any other life chang-
ing event. The identity of an object is
therefore not a direct result of its singu-
larity, uniqueness or use value but will
have “...emerged from a background of
materials, persons, practices and histo-
ries” (Thomas 1996, 155). Hence to
determine the value of things in relation
to economic aspects only is really to
devalue them and underestimate the com-
plex relations they are part of. In many
cases the value of an object is its very
materiality, the fact that it is there and is
seen, for example in an open grave, and
moreover that it will last as a material
reminder/part of a relation, person, event
or other. To understand these things one
should therefore “.. ,not assume anything
about what they are, but try to understand
how they come to be ancient artefacts
[grave goods] or whatever else” (Holtorf
2002, 55) - that is to focus on the net-
works they compose and are themselves
composed by.
Collective material memory
Obviously, we can never be certain
whether things in a grave relate to the
person interred, those who organized and
buried the deceased, to both parts, or
neither. Grave goods may have been pos-
sessed and used by the deceased in life
and thereby come to hold a biographical
status as well as become integral to his/
her identity construction. Grave goods
may also include items given to the
deceased by the living, at the time of
burial, as a means to withhold or build
relations that reached beyond life and
death. Or they may have been thought of
as equipment to be employed in the after-
life awaiting the deceased. Possibly these
items or animals were selected and placed
in the grave to commemorate the dead or
even to gratiíy them and thereby prevent
them from retuming to haunt the living
(Parker Pearson 2003, 7). It is well pos-
sible that all of these may have affected
when, how or what was placed in the
grave. One aspect does not exclude the
other.
The relationships between people and
things are complex, and have often been
ignored or overlooked. However, their
literally enmeshed relations in a Viking
Age grave give us reason to consider. As
proclaimed by Julian Thomas (1996,
169) “[t]he physical proximity of things
forges a relationship between them”, and
especially so when their gathering is
achieved within some sort of a performa-
tive practice, which I believe graves and
the act of burial would defmitely consti-
tute. What generally distinguishes a
Viking Age burial from a Christian one is
not merely the use of grave goods, but
more importantly the visual demonstra-
tion of those objects in relation to the
dead body. During a Christian (Lutheran)
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