Manifesting power - the creation of monumental Gamla Uppsala

John Ljungkvist DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND ANCIENT HISTORY, UPPSALA UNIVERSITY The monumentality of Gamla Uppsala is one of the sites main characteristics besides numerous very Early Medieval literary records. Barely ten years ago was the centre considered a Migration period period creation, primarilyon basis of datings of the mounds. Today are these datings revised and the results from repetitive excavations in combination with major revisions of existing data, have generated a strongly revised picture of how the monumentality of the site is created during less than a century. We can today talk about a monumental entity constituted by grave mounds, raised buildings on artificial plateaus and very long post row constructions, leading into and demarcating the centre. In this presentation I intend to emphasize the societal context of the site. Its relation to contemporary societala transformations and not the least relations to Europe, reflected in imports of both objects and ideas between c. 550-700 AD.