 Right. Good afternoon everyone. I'm really really happy and excited to be presenting this today. This is the very very early stages of my postdoctoral project that I started only three or four months ago and that kind of got slowed down a bit because of personal reason like a mini-merc medieval hopefully person that's going to come at some point. But as a result half of the fieldwork I suppose and hopefully present the result of today didn't happen. So I thought instead of doing this I'm going to take a step back think about and discuss a little bit about the big ideas that are behind the project that I am starting to work on at the moment. So as the title says my project is looking at the transformation of places of devotion in early medieval northwestern Europe and when I say northwestern Europe I'm really looking at the kind of edges what was kind of beyond the Roman Empire that has a different narrative of what is happening in the post-Roman Europe. So for today's presentation I'm first of all going to discuss a little bit these different processes of Christianization in both post-Roman Europe but also beyond the role of the elites in this Christianization of the landscape, the role of car stones through that because this is what my research is built on. I did a PhD on comparing the use of car stones in the landscape in Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland and that's my reason for being here today because you know comparisons and that's cool. And then the process of centralization of places of ritual and burial places and assembly places and then looking at the northwest in particular the question of the very narrative and very scholarships that we have access to and what their differences and similarities can help or sometime Mender may be a bit difficult this whole process of comparison. Looking at the methodological challenges a little bit and then addressing the question of you know the challenge of the box thinking in the box outside the box or without a box or whatever. So very briefly that the process of Christianization in post-Roman Europe as a contrast kind of doing a little bit of a disclaimer here I'm kind of keeping those term generals we know that there's a lot more complexities that are going into that of course but looking at the wide narrative there are some recognizable patterns in post-Roman Europe and mostly in kind of continental post-Roman Europe. It's quite well documented it's very widely researched and understood and whether you work in France or Italy or Germany you can find archaeologically and sometime with through written sources similarities that help understand this process of post-Roman and establishment of new Christian cult centers and a place of ritual. There's also some very big physical processes happening especially between the 9th and 12th centuries such as the formation of towns and villages, densification of a nucleation of population that has been referred to as incastellamento but also the process of centralization around churches or ecclesiastical centers that are that is called in ecclesiamento and also as with churches also assembly places and burial places etc. But when we look at beyond so that's why I put you know you have the nice map of the Roman Empire the way we know it in the second and third century and then the beyond and it's usually kind of cut by the map because that's not really what we're looking at I couldn't really cut England with my circle but let's imagine that I'm really looking at the beyond here and when we look at these regions especially during this time period between roughly the 5th to the 12th century we have a wide range of evidence whether it is archaeological evidence or written sources or complete lack thereof as well for people who work in Scotland as there's many today we know what we're talking about here or not especially lack but complexity of and there's not really a marked centralization of dense or dense population village or town between the 11th or 12th century especially in Scotland and some part of Scandinavia apart from exceptions what about in ecclesiamento this recentering around ecclesiastical centers and churches and so the kind of big question that's underlying all of this is while all these differences are happening all over the places in this northwestern edge can we say that there are there's this similarly big processes at work that we can see and observe in the post-roman rest of Europe if you wish so interestingly and that was what my research has been building up so far and that was kind of the thread I use for my PhD is there's one element that we can find in a lot of different areas of northwestern Europe and more specifically in Ireland, Britain, Scandinavia some occurrences in Brittany and a few in east of Europe during their medieval period it is the use of carstones in the landscape and they are really much invested in this in this christianization of place and elite seems to be using these as investment to demonstrate either spiritual or religious power in the landscape but also to demarcate their land or to show that they are as as a project of commemoration or to record the gift of land to the church etc etc and these are quite both locally and now more inter regionally well-attested well-studied in many regions and one of the the main elements when I was doing my my PhD research one of the main element that I kind of drew from that is that by comparing them even though we are looking at different type of monuments which I'm very well aware of but the way they inform each other the way we can use the different sources and their different location and their different use inform the other and help really understand the use of these stones and that was really something important and so the three main themes that I was looking at looking at the use of stones in these three different areas so again Ireland mostly Ulster so the north of Ireland which is not the one that has the most stones really then Scotland especially the kind of southern pickland and Sweden mostly upland it's that the three themes where you know movement as making place makers movement monument creating places monument creating movement because they are indicating a lot of movement in the landscape whether they are connected to the same individual over long distances or they are referring to another place or we can recognize the school a specific school of sculpture across the landscape monuments also as objects of commemoration and and identity as well and so these main three themes where we're really kind of giving a lot of answers regarding this kind of overall use and the one that I'm really focusing on now for the postdoc is really monuments making places and how they are participating in these different stages of this process of Christianization and one of the result that I received was that that I extracted and that I need now to test further in the postdoc is that the monuments in certain regions seems really to pertain to different phases of the Christianization process some are definitely linked more to secular elites marking either the boundaries of their state or the center of it or sometimes both marking the location of a burial place or assembly place and the further the church is institutionalized the further the church becomes one of this main institution the closer to churches and to ecclesiastical center the stones are and I just thought okay that's that's why quite lucky I was looking at about I don't know 75 80 monuments about 50 sites across this geographical area and this kind of observation worked all through that okay maybe it was a lot of luck that is not impossible but that is why now I want to really test this further so looking at how stones are used in the landscape we know that they are really used as as a demonstration of power but also legitimation of power ownership by elites both secular and religious in the landscape here the example of Abel Emno in Scotland where the stones are situated quite close to a major Iron Age hill for that might or might not be still in use at the same period there's more research that's being currently done at the moment on these hill forts of the area so until recently thoughts that were abandoned after the end of the the the late Iron Age but maybe not there are sometimes also used to demarcate the land commemorate and even delineate ecclesiastical landscape as here you have the example of Cardona and Ireland in the initial and peninsula and in Sweden for instance here the case of the stones connected to Estrid who is a very important woman in the 11th century in the region of Tebi and Valentuna north of Stockholm and in all these examples and short examples and I'm showing you we're really looking at these monuments that are participating to this to this landscape of power and demonstration of this power and the spiritual power as well in the landscape here again the example of these stones connected to Estrid so that's the facial reconstruction that was done by the museum in Stockholm of this of this woman and you have here example of all the stones that are connected to her and luckily for for me when I was doing the PhD Sweden the case studies that I was working on in Sweden were really providing so much clear evidence in the sense that you have everything you have the landscape of course many of the stones have been moved from their original landscape but some are still in or closed by the original location but you have the text on the stones that will explain to you why it's been put there and by whom and for whom and also the kind of way it has been carved can give us an information of when it was carved so it's kind of ideal because you have all this information and then you start looking at the wider landscape you start looking at how they are situated and it's like oh actually that's very similar to what I observed in these two other sites which don't have all this information and things starts to really work together but I'll get back to that in a second so the kind of big question that's my my postdoctoral project is asking now is trying to bridge these different phases between the very either pre-christian or very very early Christian devotional places how is the sacred defined and we know that this is a very wide question and can we really define it I'm not sure that's really the most thing but you have to ask the first question first and then see if they work or not but there's the question of of course assembly places and burial places and these assembly places where political ritual are being performed but also sacred as well so there's never a strong limit then what are the key landscape settings of these pre-christian or very early christian sites and how did the process the whole process of christianization impact the layout and spatial agency of this early sacred site and can the notion of centralization or nucleation around churches be applied to these sacred sites in throughout northwestern europe so the case studies that I'm looking at I'm just started yet so Norway I'm looking at three sites in Trondelag, Rogeland and Westfold then Scotland as you've seen earlier there's so much going on there and hopefully with all these this new research being produced some some elements will be will be really enriching this research then Brittany in France and then the second phase if I get the funding will be also including Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and hopefully island man again we'll see how things goes and it's really to try and and draw this narrative of the whole northwestern europe to see if we we can move beyond the the diversity of chronologies and and evidence and kind of look at things in a in a more in a more universal kind of process so the methodological comparative approach that I'm looking is of course trying to be as systematic as possible in my analysis of the case studies selected definition of the of the key features and defining as well of course key characteristics so that is looking at the landscapes at the assembly places churches early churches burial grounds the topography the crosses the car stones the roads and waterways those are all the kind of landscape elements and and archaeological evidence but of course there's also looking at the historical background because that that it's so it varies so much especially in term of chronologies from one region to the other and one of the element that is also kind of key to this is trying to really look at sites that are reserved because a lot of very interesting sites are not well published or published in language that unfortunately I'm still not very fluent in norwegian even though I've tried same for swedish I can read I can make my way through this but when it's a whole report I will probably miss you know some of the key information so that is trying to move beyond this and just going back to sweden to kind of illustrate a little bit this question of centralization of places you have here with the little stars all these these these sites that are linked to estrid and to this woman who was apparently a very strong christian woman possibly her tomb was found near a ruby bro that you have just here and and really showed that she was a very christian woman and so you have all these stones that are linked to her which are christian runestones as well but by that's all in the 11th century but by the 12th century these places don't seem to be in use as much anymore and the kind of main church center is just here at the top of the lake in valentuna so this is actually what I'm I'm really trying to address is this kind of shift in the landscape between these earlier sacred sites and then where the church the the the new center or maybe continuing center in the 11th 20th century when it gets formalized gets established and what's the connection if there is one can we bridge that gap so of course there's a lot of difficulties that goes with this and some of them are that it happens quite a lot that scholarly research was for a very long time and thankfully we're moving away from this now but it was very nationally originally specific so you can get a lot of very interesting and important information locally but then when you're trying to cross things around that gets a bit more complex and then evidence seems to show in especially in these areas that I was mentioning earlier part particularities more particularities that that in this post Roman world that seems kind of much more showing a much more unified picture if I may say again disclaimer so those are part of the boxes that are starting to to are starting not I'm not starting to appear but are kind of there to start with then there's the diversity of evidence not all the areas that I'm working on have very clear evidence not all the area that I'm working on have historical or written sources some have or may not have strong place names evidence historical sources archaeological remains etc but they might have some of these and so there's always like gaps and elements missing and also something that I have encountered thankfully that's not too much the case but it happens that the people who are very much working on an area and who are publishing a lot are really specialist in in one area on one time period especially so either more early medieval or early christian or iron age and again there's a gap sometimes happening in certain sites so in short the issues with methodology are kind of gathering meaningful results and offering new interpretation from areas which have very different different types of evidence available the issues with scholarship to a certain extent different academic tradition different specialization and different chronologies um of course in all the region that I showed you of course one of the first thing you can tell me is like well they're not exactly christian is at the same time so what are you exactly talking about you know scotland fifth sixth century the main baby even earlier than that same for island uh and in scandinavia sweden 11th 10th late 10th uh norway 11th also 10th um so what exactly are you talking about but the thing is if we if we kind of erase those those specific elements of chronologies but look at the wider process and and the social process that goes with it can we actually demonstrate the evidence of this process rather than the specific cities so how how to move beyond this issue and i'm coming back to my little boxes and thinking well does thinking outside of the box is enough is it enough and so what i'm really trying to do i get i think here is to get rid of the boxes entirely and just kind of trying to throw them away and from all these different elements yes i know and that's the last one absolutely uh looking at at the kind of universality or globality of this process more in a kind of long delay rather than specific then that will be supported by comparison and comparative work this comparison will of course show some connection but also a lot of contrast and i think that's just as meaningful as the rest but one of the key point here is trying to really to open and broaden the conversation and build bridges between different elements of scholarship and at the end of the day the answer that i'm trying to provide or maybe asking more question about is really does it matter whether the Christianization process started and lasted for 200 500 800 years what is interesting is we start at a certain level in the in different time periods but by the 11th 12th century we have the first churches we have these ecclesiastical centers and and so this process is has happened and so in the meantime are we looking at the same process not linked to how long it lasted and that's it for me thank you very much