This study explores the concept of historical empathy in the context of field trips for young pupils to a prehistoric heritage site in Sweden. The example discussed is a field trip to Vitlycke, a heritage and rock carving site with an associated reconstructed Bronze Age farm, where pupils had the opportunity to experience prehistory with all their senses. The study is based on the idea that historical empathy is a process that involves both cognitive and affective dimensions and that both dimensions are important for progress. The pupils were interviewed after the trip and their responses are related to the concepts of perspective recognition and care. The study shows how the cognitive and affective dimensions were interwoven in the pupils' reasoning and how the field trip contributed to an emotional and personal connection necessary for the development of historical empathy. This engagement led to a broadening and deepening of the pupils' cognitive understanding of Bronze Age life and living conditions, while the cognitive understanding of the historical context contributed to a framework in which they could use their imagination. The results also show the importance of giving pupils time to follow up on their experiences after visiting a heritage site.

Pastoralism offers a vast field of study, and within it transhumant practices represent an important range of past and contemporary human mobility strategies. In its widest sense, transhumance may simply be described as the seasonal movement of livestock. The Oxford English Dictionary adds some environmental qualification to this by defining transhumance as “the action or practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle, typically to lowlands in winter and highlands in summer”. The wide-ranging geographic and social implications of such a definition mean, of course, that the study of transhumant practices permits a very wide perspective on human society, touching on themes as diverse as livestock management, economic responsiveness, social mobility and competition for land. Furthermore, use of the relative words ‘lowlands’ and ‘highlands’ means that a considerable proportion of the earth’s surface may be considered as potential settings for transhumance. There are consequently many ways in which people might conceive of and define the practice, and there has not been one, but many transhumant pastoralisms in Europe during historical times

Shielings are the historically known form of transhumance in Scandinavia, where livestock were moved from the farmsteadto sites in the outlands for summer grazing. Pollen analysis has provided a valuable insight into the history of shielings. Thispaper presents a vegetation reconstruction and archaeological survey from the shieling Kårebolssätern in northern Värmland,western Sweden, a renovated shieling that is still operating today. The first evidence of human activities in the area nearKårebolssätern are Hordeum- and Cannabis-type pollen grains occurring from ca. 100 bc. Further signs of human impactare charcoal and sporadic occurrences of apophyte pollen from ca. ad 250 and pollen indicating opening of the canopy ca.ad 570, probably a result of modification of the forest for grazing. A decrease in land use is seen between ad 1000 and 1250,possibly in response to a shift in emphasis towards large scale commodity production in the outlands. Emphasis on bloomeryiron production and pitfall hunting may have caused a shift from agrarian shieling activity. The clearest changes in the pollenassemblage indicating grazing and cultivation occur from the mid-thirteenth century, coinciding with wetter climate at thebeginning of the Little Ice Age. The earliest occurrences of anthropochores in the record predate those of other shieling sitesin Sweden. The pollen analysis reveals evidence of land use that predates the results of the archaeological survey. The studyhighlights how pollen analysis can reveal vegetation changes where early archaeological remains are obscure.

In this article, we present ongoing archaeological research into Scandinavia's forested inland region, suggesting that its people and communities were socially and economically integrated into systems of trade and in close interaction with the worlds outside, as early as the first centuries of the Common Era. The article presents a range of archaeological evidence, from ca. 500 to 1400 CE, for processes of ecological globalization, manifested by the exploitation of local landscapes and the extraction of valued products that could be transformed into commodities through crafts and trade. These forested landscapes were reliant on—and also shaped by—complex social and economic relations reflecting interrelated socio-economic systems of extraction, production, and consumption. Our main argument is that these landscapes are crucial to identifying and understanding the contours of the premodern global North.

This chapter outlines several ideas in the study of material culture, home and migration, focusing on two groups of objects. First, the category of diasporic objects is used to refer to domestic artefacts that act both as reminders and signifiers of migrants' cultural identity and heritage. While connecting migrants with their homeland, these objects also remind of one's detachment from it. Second, the category of sticky objects is deployed to describe artefacts that evoke difficult and, at times, 'dark' associations for their owners, who, however, continue keeping them, as if they got 'stuck' to them. Both groups of objects offer tools for capturing complex aspects of life at home and migration as well as feelings and emotions that accompany it. The chapter also highlights the embodied dimension of home by discussing how material objects can act as 'embodiment' of one's cultural identity and belonging as well as of difficult feelings of ambivalence and discomfort.

The driving force behind agrarian settlement colonisation in the forested Scandinavian inlands in the centuries around or after AD appears to have been the hunt for luxury commodities traded to the elites, such as furs. The settlement colonisation was carried out through an innovation package encompassing farmstead – shieling – outland use, due to limited natural conditions suitable for agriculture. During the Viking Age and the Early Middle Ages in the area investigated in this chapter, Northern Värmland, there was extensive pitfall hunting and production of bloomery iron aimed at an external market. When the market broke down in the High Middle Ages, the forest peasants increased the agrarian outland use and the local self-subsistence economy. In particular shielings, seasonally used sites for cattle breeding, hay making, and occasionally some cereal cultivation in the outland have proven to have been adaptable and flexible key enablers for sustainable local communities.However, pollen analyses have shown that cereal cultivation was the major land use at some historically known shieling sites, and had been so since their founding in the Early to Middle Iron Age, c. AD 0‑400. Although cereal cultivation was present on most shielings, and there were fields for outland cereal cultivation, these most often date to the second half of the Middle Ages and early modern times, and were part of the increased agrarian outland use that took place after the collapse of the market for outland commodities. In this chapter it is therefore argued that the finds of substantial cereal cultivation from the time of agrarian settlement colonisation in the Early to Middle Iron Age at some historically known shieling sites point either to outland cereal cultivation being another component of the settlement colonisation innovation package, or that the settlement colonisation could be staged through a system of satellite farmsteads.