Research at the department of Archaeology and Ancient History

Centres of excellency

In June 2023, the Swedish Research Council established 15 centres of excellency, selected from 124 applications in all subjects; each received five years of funding with a possible extension of five additional years.

Our department participates in two of these cengtres of excellency, The World in the Viking Age - WiVA - and the Centre for the Human Prehistory.

WiVA is completely administrated by our department, and plans are under way for implementation, new positions and infrastructure. While it has long been a touchstone of identity, culture, heritage, and emotion in the Nordic countries, a fascination for the Viking Age is also an enduring global phenomenon. At the same time, the Vikings have been stereotyped and politically misappropriated almost beyond recognition, and there is a greater urgency to nuanced interpretation in both the academic and public arenas. These issues lie at the heart of the WiVA Centre.

The Centre for the Human Prehistory is administrated by the Department of Organismal Biology, and some of our researchers participate with research time. The Center for the Human Past (CHP) seeks to bridge the three disciplines Archaeology, Genetics and Linguistics that investigate the same history of the same world populations in the last 10,000 years.