Fredrik FahlanderProfessor

About me

Fredrik Fahlander (b. 1965) is professor of archaeology at Stockholm University. I received my doctoral degree in 2003 from the Department of Archaeology, the University of Gothenburg where I worked as a lecturer and researcher. In 2009 I began a postdoctoral research fellowship at Stockholm University and since 2013 I occupy a permanent position at the Department of Archaeology and Classical History. 

My research is based on a symmetrical approach that focuses on detailed analyses of social processes and sequences of events that includes both human and non-human actors. It is a relational and non-representational approach that works from the bottom-up alongside particular archaeological material and socio-material setting.

Recent research project
The project, Material images: Visual modes of material articulation in south Scandinavian rock art, financed by Riksbankens jubileumsfond aims to study Bronze Age rock art as petrofacts with a potential to affect the course of events. This is explored by analysing displacements in stylistic variability, alterations, re-cuts, superimpositions, and breaking against praxis. The method facilitates ways to study the agency of the imagery, that is, how they may incite actions. Advanced photogrammetry and three-dimensional analysis are employed to help identify details in the ways images are produced and how rock art develop over time.

Read more about the project here

Another, related project, also concern the rock art of the Mälaren bay. Digital images for research and the public aims to develop a documentation strategy adapted to the issues stressed in current research. By combining two- and three-dimensional technologies, the project aims to generate better support for research, heritage preservation and for making the cultural heritage publicly available. 

Read more about Digital images for research and the public here

Selected publications 

- 2024. Ecologies of Bronze Age Rock Art. Organisation, Design and Articulation of Petroglyphs in Eastern-central Sweden. Oxford:Oxbow Books
- 2023 (med T. Axelsson). The rock, the whole rock, and everything about the rock. 3D-scanning of Bronze Age rock art sites in central-eastern Sweden using Leica MS60 and RTC360, in Situ Archaeologica 16: 49–66.
- 2023. Fishy theory for fishy materials? A comment to Craig N. Cipolla: “When smoking pipes grow fins: revisiting the matter-meaning dualism in archaeology”, Current Anthropology 64(5): 67-8.
- 2023 (med A. Vinberg). Gravar och aktivitetsytor från bronsålder och äldre järnålder på Jordbrogravfältet (L2014:3046) i Österhaninge sn, Haninge kn. Stockholm: Univ.
- 2023. (red) Tredimensionell dokumentation av hällar och hällbilder i Uppland. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 81. Stockholm: Univ.
- 2021. The Faceless Men. Partial bodies and body parts in Scandinavian Bronze Age rock art, In Moro Abadía, O. & Porr, M. (eds), Ontologies of Rock Art: Images, Relational Approaches and Indigenous Knowledge, 302-18. New York: Routledge.
- 2020. The Stacked, the Partial, and the Large. Visual modes of material articulation in Mälaren bay rock art, In K. I. Austvoll, M. Hem Eriksen, L. Melheim, L. Prøsch-Danielsen & L. Skogstrand (eds), Contrasts of the Nordic Bronze Age. Essays in Honour of Christopher Prescott, pp 127-37. Turnhout: Brepol.
- 2020. The partial and the vague as a visual mode in Bronze Age rock art, In I-M Back Danielsson & A. M. Jones (eds), Images in the making: Art-Process-Archaeology, 204-17. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 
- 2020. Unruly bones and efficacious stones. Materialities of death in Early Christian post-burial interactions in central eastern Sweden, Grave disturbances. The archaeology of post-depositional interactions with the dead. E. Aspöck, N. Müller-Scheessel & A. Klevnäs  (eds), Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 27-41.
- 2020. Becoming Dead. Burial assemblages as vitalist devices, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 30(4).
- 2019. Size Matters: Hyperbolism in South Scandinavian Rock Art, Fennoscandia archaeologica XXXVI: 53-67.
- 2019. Fantastic Beings and Where to Make Them. Boats as Object-Beings in Bronze Age Rock Art, Current Swedish Archaeology 27: 191-212.
- 2019. Reflections on theoretical archaeology in the Nordic countries today, Arkæologisk Forum 41: 17-9.
- 2019. Petroglyphs as 'contraptions' - Animacy and vitalist technologies in a Bronze Age archipelago, Time and Mind vol 12(2): 109-20.
- 2019. The mediality of rock and metal. Exploring formal analyses of rock art through graffiti, In: D. Gheorghiu and T. Barth (Eds.), Artistic Practices and Archaeological Research, Oxford: Archaeopress, pp 31-40.
- 2018. Bildbruk i mellanrum. Mälarvikens hällbilder under andra årtusendet fvt, Stockholm: Univ.
- 2018. The relational life of trees. Ontological aspects of "tree-ness" in the Early Bronze Age of Northern Europe, Open Archaeology 4(1): 373-385.
- 2018. Grave encounters: Ontological and material aspects of post-burial practices in south Scandinavian Late Iron Age, Primitive Tider 20: 51-63.
- 2018. Nuances of what? Burials as relational configurations. Norwegian archaeological review, 51(2): 78-81.
- 2018. (med Anders Högberg). Keynote: The changing roles of archaeology in Swedish museums, today and in the future, Current Swedish Archaeology, 25: 13-19.
- 2017. Materiella bilder: Visuella uttryck bland Mälarvikens hällbilder, In: New Perspectives on the Bronze Age, S. Bergerbrantd & A. Wessman (eds), Oxford: Archaeopress, 267-80.
- 2017. Ontology matters in archaeology and anthropology. People, things and posthumanism, In: These “Thin Partitions”: Bridging the Growing Divide between Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology, J. D. Englehardt & I. A. Rieger (eds), Boulder: University Press of Colorado, pp. 69-86.
- 2016. The materiality of the ancient dead. Post-burial practices and ontologies of death in southern Sweden AD 800–1200. Current Swedish Archaeology, Vol 24: 137-162 
- 2015. The skin I live in. The materiality of body imagery, In: Own and be owned, Archaeological perspectives of the concept of possessions, Eds. Charlotte Hedenstierna Jonson & Alison Klevnäs, Stockholm: Univ, pp49-72.
- 2014. Postmodern Archaeologies, The Oxford Handbook of Archaeological Theory, Eds: Andrew Gardner, Mark Lake and Ulrike Sommer, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- 2014. Djur och människor: posthumanistiska perspektiv på yngre järnålderns gravar, In: Med hjärta och hjärna: en vänbok till Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, Henrik Alexandersson, Alexander Andreeff & Annika Bünz (red). Göteborg: Univ. Pp. 237-250.
- 2013. Articulating Relations: A non-representational view of Scandinavian Rock-art, In: Archaeology after Interpretation. Returning Materials to Archaeological Theory. Alberti, B., Jones, A. & Pollard, J. (Eds), Left Coast Press. pp 305-24.
- 2013. Intersecting Generations. Burying the Old in a Neolithic Hunter-Fisher Community, Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Vol 23(2): 227-239.
- 2012. Mesolithic childhoods: Changing Life-Courses of Young Hunter-Fishers in the Stone Age of Southern Scandinavia, Journal of Childhood in the Past, no 5: 20–34.
 - 2012. (med N. Burström) Matters of scale. Processes and courses of
events in archaeology and cultural history, N. M. Burström & F. Fahlander
(Eds), Stockholm: Univ.
- 2012. (med I-M Back Danielsson & Y. Sjöstrand). Encountering Imagery:
Materialities, Perceptions, Relations, I.-M. Back Danielsson, F.
Fahlander & Y. Sjöstrand (Eds), Stockholm: Univ.
- 2011. Spåren av de små: Arkeologiska perspektiv på barn och barndom, Fredrik Fahlander (Red), Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 54, Stockholm: Univ.
- 2010. (med A. Kjellström). Making sense of things. Archaeologies of
sensory perception, Fredrik Fahlander & Anna Kjellström (eds),
Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 53, Stockholm: Univ.

Full list of downloadable publications