As I come to the end of my time at the IAS, I now find myself preparing to return to Sweden and the daily rhythms of life in my home institution. In doing so, I look back on what has been a hugely productive visit to Durham. While at the IAS, I have not only presented on a range of topics relating to my current work, but I have also had the opportunity to meet and discuss research with both old and new colleagues, to learn about upcoming initiatives, and to plan future collaborations.
My stay has also exposed me to many exciting ideas and topics of research.
As an Institute, the IAS is designed to bring together scholars working in a variety of fields, at institutions across the globe. The diverse range of projects hosted this term, including the Confronting Climate Apartheid and Interest in Cattle initiatives, have drawn me into discussions of issues that, as an archaeologist, I rarely engage with directly. I have had the opportunity to learn about subjects such as the social, political, and economic issues surrounding government-initiated cattle vaccination programmes in Africa, as well as the differential impacts (and future implications) of climate change for regional populations globally.
While such discussions, on one hand, might seem to lie far from my sphere of interest, which focuses on Viking-Age Scandinavia, they are in fact deeply thought provoking. When one spends their life studying the fragmentary material remains of the distant past, it is all too easy to forget that the communities who created the archaeological record were also regularly forced to confront and navigate a range of issues and concerns. Many groups living in the prehistoric past were subject to deeply-entrenched social inequalities, while others lived precarious lives exposed to the potentially disastrous impacts of both short- and longer-term patterns of climate fluctuation, famine, and disease. At the same time, local and regional populations sought to establish and maintain bonds that facilitated sustainable long-term cooperation, as well as institutions that were intended to check the ambitions of individuals who overextended their influence and power. While their world is separated from our own by more than a millennium of social, political, and cultural change, the people of the past lived lives that were just as complex and dynamic as ours today. My stay at the IAS has served not only to deepen my understanding of this complexity, but also to renew my appreciation of the entangled nature of the past and present.
Dr Benjamin Raffield University of Uppsala
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