I think you promised me somthing abot the pre-IE religion. It would be interesting to read/visit a vouple of sites fornlämningar of this nature, do you have any tips?
Have you heard about the swedish database on the internet for all the fornlämningar in the entire empire? forgot the name now, but its great - you just pick any place in sweden and you get a list of all of the ones present.
A question: how many mounds have been dug in/ excravated(or however the fuck its spelled)? And how do we protect the ones that haven't from raiders?
Oh, damn, Pagan, I'm sorry! I thought I had done that already...
Don't get me started!!
I think you'll have a hard time getting most of the litterature, because most of it is scholarly books that are not library sorts of stuff. One of the best books out there on this, if you can get it, is Thomas B. Larsson's "Materiell Kultur och Religiösa Symboler" from 1997 (Institutionen för arkeologi Umeå universitet). Very nice book for this. Christopher Tilley might have a few books out (I know he's done work relating to this), too, but he's very difficult to understand for a non-Anglophone, and I do not agree with his interpretations myself (but you might!). I've tried to find anything in English, but with no luck, which I find odd, since Stonehenge and Newgrange should have been covered extensively... There may be something in French, because of Carnac, and Portugal was a sort of epi-centre for the religion, seemingly, so you'd think there'd be more litterature. I'm probably not looking in the right places. If I come across something new, I'll let you know. If you're interested, I can recommend some videos you can rent, too. In Swedish...
As far as places to visit are concerned, obvioulsly Tanum (Sweden), because of its sheer size and beauty. It's amazing. Spectacular. And it's a world heritage site. It's a must see. Malta and the temples there are amazing, Newgrange on Ireland is huuuuge, amazing (I think more amazing - and older - than Stonehenge, 9000+ years old C14!). They all show the same things as far as patterns and such, and the layout of the temples and so on are the same, only smaller, the farther north you go.
In regards to how many mounds have been exacvated, I really don't know. Burial customs vary over time, too, so I don't know how many of the X number of graves excavated would be mounds either. A lot of times you're looking at "dösar" of some variety, which are identical in morphology to the larger megalithic monuments in the British Isles and Malta (for example) only in miniature in comparison. The "decore" is generally the same, too, with swirly patterns and such. Then ther are cremations and regular enterments, which are just falt and have no markers above ground. The best place to find out would be Riksantikvarieämbetet (RAÄ). They're in charge of that stuff if anyone is at all is keeping a tally...
The only way to protect stuff is by locating it, reporting it to RAÄ, have them come out and give it official status, then they are in charge from there on. The law in Sweden is very specific regarding what you can and cannot do with "old stuff". It's also easier said than done to loot a grave that's been registered - it takes a fair while to dig things up well enough that they don't loose their value in the process, and even then, you have to find the grave first! Chances are, if you find something sensitive, you'll get more money from SHM or Länsmuseet (or something like that) after the grave's been excavated properly than you'll ever get for a badly fractured piece of unidentified something rather (which is what you get if it's not excavated and documented properly) on eBay (which is not to say it doesn't happen - just to say it's not necessarily cost-effective to bother!) More dangerous is when people know they have a grave or a "stensträng" or fornåker or something and decide to still put a hole in it to drive their car through, or to still plow over it, because they don't have time to wait for us to exacvate on their property - after all, they need the land to farm or live on, and if we're on it, they can't use it until we're done. As far as new developments (roads and buildings going up), on the whole, because the law is so strict on this, most companies work pretty damn hard to avoid sensitive areas - they have to foot the bill for any excavatons if they decide to build over top of anything sensitive, and they avoid that like the plague.
You must remember, though, that just because "we" know something is there, that doesn't mean we're going to excavate it. You excavate only if the good of current society outweighs the diseased person's right to remain buried where he or she is right now. That is, if a town really badly needs a new hospital but there is a grave (or fifty) right where they want to put it, first you'd try your hardest to move the future hospital, and if that really, really isn't possible (as was the case with the parkade that they needed for the "houses of parliament" - statshuset - in Stockholm, where they found a whole town once they started digging the foundation - oops!!),
then you excavate. Other than that, you leave people alone where they are buried with care and attention by their loved ones. The days when we excavated just for the hell of it are long gone. At least in Sweden...(unfortunately not in the rest of the world).
Looting is more of a problem in places like Mexico and Egypt, where you're likely to find larger pieces of crafted gold and such. Sometimes what "protecting" those sites entails is for archaeologists to sleep on site with loaded rifles. No joke. It gets very dangerous sometimes. I've had "tourists" come to visit a dig and, as I am sieving, stick their hands into my sieve and say "Oh look, I found a tooth/arrowhead/piece of jewellry! Nice!" and just try to walk off with it, thinking "finders keepers". They didn't figure on my being a berserker, though, and I found it first, so there...
There are a few really good sites. FMIS fornsök is one. RAÄ has a great site, so does SHM.
