Since exploring the trend of hybridising imagery in the Nordic Bronze Age as part of my B.A. dissertation at the Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Aarhus University, I have been fascinated by ornamentation as well as its potential to identify other aspects of culture. Recently, my B.A. dissertation was reworked into an article together with Helle Vandkilde and has just been published in the Danish Journal of Archaeology. As part of an M.A. exam, I also investigated whether such imagery is visible within a European framework, which gave me the idea for my 4+4 PhD project “European Late Bronze Age Networks: an iconographic perspective”, as some trends in Bronze Age ornamentation are highly globalised whereas others are locally adopted and reworked into  localised versions.

My research will focus on uncovering networks of communication, modes of cultural transmission and local appropriation of figurative imagery in Late Bronze Age Europe c. 1300-700 BCE. I am investigating these through Bronze Age images that are remarkably similar through time and space, e.g. bull’s horns, serpents, horses, waterfowl, waves, etc. I am interested in the different scales of Bronze Age networks and the underlying processes and will also look into how some of these might have coincided with and/or affected major socio-cultural changes taking place across Europe during this time.

Supervisor: Helle Vandkilde, Aarhus University

Co-supervisor: Stephen Shennan, University of College London

Contact information:

Laura Ahlqvist
Institut for Kultur og Samfund - Afdeling for Arkæologi og Kulturarvsstudier
Moesgård Allé 20
8270 Højbjerg

laura.ahlqvist@cas.au.dk