Programme

 13.00: Introduction by NN                          

13.15:  Claes Pettersson, JÖNKÖPINGS LÄNS MUSEUM

New Modes of Production for New Times! Skilled German craftsmen as agents for transfer of know-how in the establishing of a large scale cloth production in Sweden

Abstract: The Royal Chartered Textile Manufacture (Vantmakeriet) established in Jönköping in 1620 relied on the modes of production and skills of German weavers whose arrival significantly increased the town’s population. Recent excavations revealed a vivid picture of the material culture of this group with its marked preference for imported food and maintenance of their urban, continental lifestyle. But what can be said about the relation between the German craftsmen and the Swedish population? In what ways were the locals adopting new lifestyles? What were the lasting results of this meeting between local and continental ways of life? This paper addresses these questions.

14.00:  Jette Linaa, URBAN DIASPORA/MOMU

European entanglements. Merchants, craftsmen and other migrants in Early Modern Denmark

AbstractMovement and instability are the core of human experience. With the starting point in Hodders thoughts on tanglements, this paper aims to address how materiality offered ways to control time and transformation in the early Modern world among people moving across time and space. Documentary records are often seen at the heart of historical archaeology, but archaeology has to offer are insights the tanglement of object, place and people that penetrates far deeper into the depths of our past than written records alone allows.  In this paper, I will put forth examples of the entanglement of merchants, craftsmen and other migrants in the Early Modern world, all orchestrated around the social fields of consumption and expulsion, touching on memory and forgetfulness, hope and fear and longing and shame. The examples are gathered from the ongoing Danish Council for independent Research/Humanities project "Urban Diaspora - Diaspora communities and materiality in Early Modern Urban Center”, hosted at Moesgaard Museum

14.45:  Coffee

15.00:  Magdalena Naum, AU:

Colonial tangles: America, Lapland and material desires

Abstract: Chris Gosden (2004) defined colonialism as a relationship of desire, “a particular grip that material culture gets on the bodies and minds of people, moving them across space”. Taking as a point of departure 17th century Swedish colonial ambitions and engagements I will focus on some of these colonial desires and the ways they have entangled two very distant places – America and Lapland. Discussing the pursuit of silver and exotica on the one hand and the pursuit of civility on the other hand I want to consider how Lapland and America were not only two localities simultaneously affected by colonialism but places whose distant geographies occasionally collapsed, leading to Lapland being rhetorically regarded as America and Sami as Indians.

15.45:  Final discussion

16.00: Wine reception

The seminar is arranged in cooperation between the research programme for Materials, Culture and Heritage, Schoool of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, and Moesgaard Museum.

The seminar is open to everyone.